16 Hours - Green Tea. Little Miss Piggy's Flu

There is one problem with whistleblowers. We all overwork. Overworking has a detrimental impact on your immune system. I found this out last year. Nevertheless, like all optimists, I have developed a system to rebuild my immunity despite the fact I normally have no insight into the fact that I work 10 times faster than the average human being. I am always told this but it has always been like this since I was a teenager so there we go.

I have just woken up from a deep slumber. It was good to know that I wasn't dead. It is always rather fun to discover that an illness hasn't killed you. I would make a terrible ghost.

I am now 16 hours into my swine flu state. Aspirin appears to have decreased my temperature. Having broken out in a huge sweat while asleep for all the wrong reasons I ended up getting lost in my duvet. The problem with duvets is that duvet covers are extremely complicated. Despite my moderately modest IQ, I still have not mastered the art of duvet cover changing. Anyway, it took me 20 minutes and now it is in some reasonable order.

As I am quarantined from the rest of the human beings I interact with, I decided to go thieving around the house for food. Covetted food tastes better. I do recall Dr India who went to stay with his friends in Europe. Overnight, he thieved a chicken leg from the fridge. He joyfully munched his way through said chicken leg while reading the Da Vinci Code. All hell broke loose the next morning over this chicken leg. World War 3 broke out and he was sent back to England. The war over the one chicken leg stolen after midnight lasted for 2 weeks or more and extended to a certain political party. Dr India opted to return said chicken leg to no avail. The offending chicken leg will never be seen again!

I on the other hand regularly thieve from my own stash of food supply. The vital thing in life is to ensure that you have large fluffy slippers, a fluffy warm dressing gown and a box full of Highland Shortbread while being ill. I have today finally found this large concealed box Highland Shortbread. There is no point relying on the Scottish men up in Inverness.

The next issue was to turn Green Tea into something decent that I could tolerate. I don't drink alcohol, don't smoke, don't like PG Tips, hardly ever drink coffee and often keep away from fizzy drinks. Yes, I am boring. But Green Tea has been plaguing my mind for two days now. My recent combination is Green Tea plus Manuka Honey. Well, there is some scientific logic to this. There is always some skewed logic to the way I think about things - so here we go. Here is a summary of the properties of Green Tea . Further info here

"Drink green tea – One little known secret about preventing the flu is adding green tea to your diet. Research has shown that green tea is extremely effective at preventing the flu, when consumed regularly. One study, reported by the UK Tea Council showed that green tea can protect in two ways. First, green tea suppresses the growth of influenza cells. Secondly, green tea actually kills off the influenza cells.

And, one thing that’s so great about green tea - it can protect against many strains of the flu virus. The flu vaccine each year just protects against that year’s most prevalent strain.

Green tea has recently garnered much attention for its ability to prevent disease and protect health. Research has shown that green tea’s powerful anti-oxidants are the key to preventing serious illnesses like cancer and cardiovascular disease"

And here

A recent study published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition looked at the effect of green tea on health during the flu season. The study followed 118 healthy adults for three months during flu season; the participants ingested a capsule twice per day. The capsule was either decaffeinated green tea extract, which contained a standardized amount of the two immune-activating plant components found in green tea - L-theanine and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG); or a placebo.

The green tea group when compared with the placebo group experienced 32.1% fewer cold and flu symptoms. The green tea group reported 22.9% fewer illnesses which lasted two or more days. Of the green tea group that did experience illness only 5.7% of them became ill enough that they sought medical care, in comparison to 12.7% in the placebo group. Other studies have also shown that gargling with green tea can aid in the prevention of cold and flu. The Japanese study showed that the virus which causes the flu can become non-infectious by having 5 seconds of contact with green tea.

I have previously talked about the effects of Manuka Honey. Today, I made the executive decision to combine the two. Green Tea and Manuka Honey is actually much more tolerable Actually, it's Green Tea, Manuka Honey stirred in and shortbread. As for my collection of intellectual material, I have dumped it to go and watch Mike the plumber in Desperate Housewives.

Now why doesn't our plumber ever look like Mike?