Health Watch Q & A - Vol 4 Issue 1
THANKS FOR ASKING
Virginia Responds to Reader Questions
Q: I took Dr. Shen’s Yin Chiao as soon as I felt the flu coming on, and managed to head it off—thanks for the recommendation! My wife didn’t take it and was down with the flu for a couple of weeks. Now she’s got a dry, itchy kind of cough in her throat that just won’t go away. Do you have any suggestions for that?
A: The cough that follows this season’s flu seems to be caused by upper respiratory irritation and inflammation. Any hot, soothing liquid will help. Fresh squeezed lemon juice with a touch of honey is a favorite. If you like herbal teas, chamomile is a good generic choice—I like Celestial Seasoning's Sleepytime tea, and it can be found at most supermarkets. Yogi Tea has a good formula called Breathe Deep. If you’re shopping for a cough formula tea, look for soothing herbs such as licorice, slippery elm, horehound, marshmallow and mullein. Licorice has the wonderful quality of boosting the effects of other ingredients, gently supports the adrenals and helps with bronchial spasms. Don’t drink a lot of licorice tea for an extended period of time if you have high blood pressure.
If you tend to have pollen allergies, herbal teas can cause an allergic reaction that makes things worse. If you get worse after drinking an herbal tea, choose another one or stick to lemon juice and honey.
The various throat lozenges with menthol and eucalyptus will (very) temporarily suppress a dry cough, but they tend to include fructose (corn syrup), artificial sweeteners and food colorings, and aren’t very healing, so they don’t make a good ongoing remedy.
It may also help to wrap a scarf around your throat to keep that area warm (and make a fashion statement).
Q: In the last issue of the Hopkins Health Watch, you mentioned that dry cleaners are now adding fragrance to their cleaning fluids. My dry cleaner recently started advertising “organic dry cleaning.” It sounds too good to be true.
A: Yes, it is too good to be true. Technically speaking, if you’re a chemist, anything with a carbon chain is “organic,” which would make gasoline, cyanide and deadly nightshade organic. It’s a semantic lie, and intentionally deceptive marketing, since most of us assume that something labeled “organic” is harmless to our health and to the environment. The so-called organic dry cleaning chemical is DF-2000, which the EPA lists as a neurotoxin, and as a skin and eye irritant. In terms of toxicity, it’s only marginally better than the standard dry cleaning solvent perchloroethylene, or perc, and it’s just as harmful to the environment.
Q: I heard that the sweetener xylitol, which you have recommended [for humans] in the past, can poison dogs. Is this true?
A: Yes, xylitol can poison dogs. It’s a mystery why humans can ingest it with no side effects (except gas in some susceptible people), and yet it can make dogs very sick. Symptoms can include vomiting, diarrhea, loss of coordination and seizures. Other people foods that can poison dogs include onions, raisins and chocolate.
Q: You introduced a new vitamin D blood spot test a few weeks ago and gave recommendations for taking supplements. But do we have solid evidence that supplements really take the place of getting out in the sun?
A: That’s a great question. We really do need more research showing that vitamin D supplements ward off the long list of health problems caused by vitamin D deficiency. So far, most of the research just confirms that people with low vitamin D levels have a much higher risk of various cancers, osteoporosis, heart disease and multiple sclerosis, for example. But we can’t automatically assume that supplements will have the exact same effect as sun exposure—a lot goes on between the time the sun’s rays hit the skin, the conversion to vitamin D occurs, and its entry into cells. We do know that supplementation prevents the bone disease rickets and helps increase bone density, but we do need clear, consistent research showing benefits in the other diseases related to deficiency. I believe odds are good that vitamin D supplementation will help prevent the deficiency diseases, but that it’s also wise to get an average of 15 minutes of sun exposure daily if and when you can.
Share this page: