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Nature's Virus Killers
by author Mark Stengler, ND, The Natural Physician

Centuries before the first caveman, viruses existed on earth. In their earliest forms, viruses were harmless messengers delivering hereditary information from newly developed life to its offspring in plants, fungi, protozoa, animals and eventually people.

As viruses evolved and adapted to environmental changes around them, they ceded their messenger roles to cells and took on a more sinister role of infecting genes. In fact, virus is the Latin word for poison.

Some viral infections are short-lived, like colds, the flu and sore throats. Others are lifelong: hepatitis and AIDS (which many people believe is caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus). Collectively, viral infections represent the prime reason people visit doctors for medical care.

Throughout history, viral epidemics have plagued mankind and proven more powerful than the mightiest of armies. A flu epidemic wiped out Charlemagne’s army in 876 AD. Thousands of American colonists in the 1720s died after being exposed to a flu virus. The Spanish Flu of 1918 killed more than 22 million people worldwide. The Hong Kong flu killed more than 70,000 Americans in the late 1960s. In the early 1980s, a new viral disease surfaced that still plagues us today: AIDS. In the late 1990s, a lethal, fast-killing virus garnered headlines: ebola. Like AIDS, there is still no cure for ebola.

Power in Simplicity

A virus is really little more than a clump of genetic material (DNA or RNA) bunched inside a protein packet. It needs a host cell to survive. Without one, it lies dormant. However, once it infiltrates a living cell within a person, plant, or animal, it taps into that cell’s reproductive equipment to duplicate itself. It makes thousands of copies of itself and in the process, damages or destroys the host cells.

All this cellular debris and loose viral particles signal your immune system to fight back. White blood cells zoom to the infected scene, releasing chemical toxins, fever stimulators and other agents built to fight invading viruses. Viruses test your body’s infection-fighting capacity. As a consequence, symptoms including pain, redness, swelling, heat, fever, and rash often result. Because a virus is essentially composed only of genetic material, you can see how the destruction of it can be so challenging.

Viruses are stubborn and sneaky and possess a keen sense of survival. A virus attempts to bypass your body’s built-in alarm system–the immune system–by growing in areas where the immune system has no access. Viruses also use mutation–altering their identity–resulting in a delayed response by the immune system. They can also cause suppression of the immune system: examples would be HIV and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV).

Fear not. Natural medicine features an arsenal of many solutions.

Know Your Viruses

Excerpted with permission from Dr Stengler’s book Nature’s Virus Killers.

Source: alive #209, March 2000