Help! Fomentations for COVID-19

Good morning,

I'm needing your help, and so are a few billion others.

A GP (family physician) friend of mine asked me for something to share with fellow GPs about hydrotherapy for COVID-19. Fortunately this friend was NOT happy with my ramblings on the topic, so I spent my Sunday going back to the books, specifically "Physical Therapy in Nursing Care" telling of the successful treatment of the last pandemic, the 1918/19 Spanish Flu.

So the treatment is: hot fomentations to chest and spine with simultaneous hot foot bath and cold compress to head followed by cold mitten friction once or twice daily with absolute bed rest between.
 
Basically they treated the person as if they had pneumonia right from the beginning.

So I wrote a page as requested for the General Practitioners' perusal.

But then I woke up this morning and realised it was useless!

How is it possible for an untrained person to do this treatment... safely (I've burnt people with fomentations), effectively (I've hospitalised a lady by changing things slowly and allowing her to get chilled... and consequently making her condition worse, I was lucky/blessed not to have killed her) and efficiently (if I follow the directions for hot fomentations I need 10 towels and 5 each fomentations and covers for just one treatment. If I don't have foments/covers then that's 10 more towels. 20 towels! Twice a day!)

And to be really effective, both the fomentations and the friction work best with 2 therapists. And finally, I don't remember ever doing that treatment. It's too much work! I don't remember treating pneumonia either. And I had a staffed hydrotherapy department at my disposal.

This treatment is big and dangerous but apparently, powerfully effective.

 In the past I've effectively treated all the fevers, flu, dengue, malaria, glandular with a strong, individualised revulsive to sweating, daily for 3 days, but I'm sure we are going to need something more targeted at Active Chest Congestion before this thing is over.

I've checked the Pneumonia and Active Chest Congestion pages on the website and the only alternative seems to be hot blanket pack (which doesn't really excite me - "Make sure the blanket is wrung dry of all water - patient may be scalded otherwise")

So you can help me by answering these questions (or sending this on to someone who can answer them):

1. Have you ever used the protocol (Fo chest back, HftB, CMF) for pneumonia? How did it go?

2. Can you think of a modern, safe and simple alternative way of heating the chest/spine to erythema with moist heat? It should be ubiquitous and cheap.

3. Any other thoughts and suggestions... So many people have contacted me lately that I'm wondering if this is the time.

 Here are links to:

My ramblings, "Treatment for Coronavirus"
The successful treatment of Spanish Flu in an Adventist seminary
And most importantly - The whole chapter on Acute Infections of the Respiratory System from Physical Therapy in Nursing Care.

Thank you for your help, I really do appreciate it,
Bruce

Prevent and treat the novel Coronavirus (probably)

I say "probably" because:

1. I haven't treated the disease so I don't know for sure,
2. The treatment I will tell you about works for normal flu, and every other fever I've thrown it against including dengue, malaria, and glandular fevers. I can't see why it shouldn't be effective in treating coronavirus too.

I was inspired by Dr Wes Youngberg's talk to write this post. I think  he is worth listening to, but there are two problems: it is way, way too long and more importantly, the hydrotherapy is not accurate. Dr Youngberg suggests we use the same hydro as was used successfully in the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic that killed somewhere between 50 million and 100 million worldwide (15,000 in Australia).

The section of the talk on hydrotherapy was good because it reinforced what I already knew about treatment of the 1918 Spanish flu and it gave me another case study (no deaths for 90 patients when the usual mortality ran at 10-20%)

But coronavirus isn't any Spanish flu.

Spanish flu induced a "cytokine storm" with more than half the deaths being in healthy people aged 20-40 years. The coronavirus seems more like a regular flu in that most of the deaths are in older people with diseases like diabetes.  

When you do hear about the next epidemic that kills the healthy young then certainly try the treatment for the Spanish flu, as Dr Youngberg recommends, but it won't be the best for coronavirus.

The hydrotherapy treatment for Coronavirus

1. Assume that any time you get a fever or chest symptoms that you are getting coronavirus and begin treatment immediately. If you get onto it early you will probably abort the disease, what ever it is.
2. First treatment: heat the body until you can see sweating on the top lip. Depending on the method it should take 15 to 20 minutes (no longer). Keep the head cool during this process. My favourite way is steam bath but sauna, hot foot bath (with or without fomentations) or hot tub bath will work. Here in our Aussie summer I know people who use the colourbond garden shed, or wrap themselves in black polythene sheeting and lie in the sun. But remember to keep your head cool! And don't use exercise. You can damage your heart doing that.
3. Follow up with short cold. Here in summer our shower water isn't cold enough, so get someone to throw 2 litres of ice water over your upper back while you stand in the shower. But in winter, just use the cold water from the shower on the nape of your neck until it makes you inhale sharply. 5 seconds of cold water is enough. If you have good friends a cold mitten friction is great.
4. Then go to bed! After you dry thoroughly of course. Rest is essential for at least 30 minutes. Stay warm too. 
5. Only do the treatment once a day for a total of 3 days. You should be right by then.

Preventing Coronavirus

The usual natural remedies should strengthen your immune system:

1. Whole-food plant-based diet - eat the best food you can afford. Lots of greens, and fruits and vegetables with lots of colour, and onions, garlic especially if you're worried.
2. Exercise outside - even gentle exercise has lots of benefits for your immune system. 
3. Sunshine
4. Deep breaths of fresh air in nature.
5. Drink lots of filtered water, a few extra glasses if you're worried.
6. Stay away from alcohol and smoke
7. De-stress. I use Meditating with Jesus
8. And get plenty of good sleep.

If you do these you will not only prevent most common infections but also prevent most of the lifestyle diseases that are too common today.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

All New web site

Take a look at the all-new Traditional Hydrotherapy site.

The site was looking a bit tired so I decided to update it and make it mobile-friendly as well. Even more satisfying has been the addition of full treatment procedures for most of the common techniques. No more dragging out the text book. And there are more pictures too.

A big thank you to the students from the Toronto hydro class for typing those procedures up. And thank you for coming along to the classes, it reinvigorated my enthusiasm for hydrotherapy. Actually it was after realising that I had to insert the procedures that got me thinking about changing the layout as well.  Traditional Hydrotherapy owes a lot to the Hydro class of 2016.

Pretty, pictures and procedures... even the Russian bath has some glamour.

Enjoy! Please let me know if anything is broken, I didn't get time to check all the pages.

One thing I'm a little disappointed in is the drop-down menu, it is a bit slow. Let me know if you don't like it, I'll put in a static one.

For those who are interested, yes, all the html and css work was done with trusty old Vim. Gotta love those keyboard macros for changing hundreds of pages in a few minutes.

The template was downloaded from w3layouts. They have a luscious looking range of responsive (mobile-friendly) templates for free! It took almost as long to choose one as it did to apply it. BTW I settled on the Vocation template. And if you look closely I didn't really have to modify it that much.

Inflammaging

Inflammaging is probably the most surprising thing I have learned in 2011. In future posts I will explain how hydrotherapy and inflammaging interact but, for now, let's look at what inflammaging is.

  Claudio Franceschi coined the term back in 2006,"to explain the now widely accepted phenomenon that ageing is accompanied by a low-grade chronic, systemic up-regulation of the inflammatory response and that the underlining inflammatory changes are also common to most age-associated diseases." (Giunta)

 Synonyms: Other researchers call it: Metaflammation, Para-flammation and Smouldering Inflammation.

 Acute Inflammation
 An acute inflammation is where the body is threatened by a pathogen, toxin or injury, the "pro-inflammatory markers", such as cytokines, are produced and the immune system responds accordingly. As the threat is neutralised, the anti-immune system kicks in, the number of inflammatory markers goes down and the immune system returns to normal. This usually takes between 3 days to about 3 weeks.

 But inflammaging is a low-grade, chronic, asymptomatic, feedback loop, that continues for years. Characterised by an over-active, but weak, immune response (lots of cytokines) and a weak anti-inflammatory response (unable to turn off the immune system). This results in simultaneous tissue damage and tissue healing over decades causing damage of specific cells and disfunction of organs.

 Diseases with definite links to inflammaging:

• Obesity (as much as 65%)
• Heart disease, stroke
• Diabetes II,
• Many cancers
• Polycystic ovary syndrome
• Alzheimers
• Depression
• Persistant pain

Diseases with probable links to inflammaging:

• Some Allergy
• Arthritis
• Asthma
• Lupus
• Crohns
• Psoriasis
• Parkinsons
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Inflammaging

This doesn't mean that all these diseases are a result of inflammaging but that the increased incidence of these diseases is probably due to inflammaging. Co-morbidities to inflammaging include:

• Increased Oxidative load (oxidised lipids)
• Insulin resistance
• Subclinical viral infection
• Epigenetic damage (damage to the parts of DNA that surround the genes and controls which genes are expressed)

Inflammaging isn't caused by something specific, it is "induced". Inducers of inflammaging include:

• Obesity
• Nutrition - excessive:
  • saturated fat intake
  • glycaemic load
  • fructose drinks
  • salt
  • alcohol
  • and starvation
• More Inducers of inflammaging :
• Inactivity
• Smoking - passive smoking
• Inadequate sleep
• Stress
• Anxiety/ Depression
• Pollution

The underlying factor is our lifestyle today, most of these inducers have only been common since the industrial revolution. Protectors against Inflammaging:

• Activity
• Adequate water
• Sunshine – light
• Temperance
• Air - breathing
• Rest – sleep, stress control
• Trust in a loving God

Nutritional Protectors include:

• Fruits/ vegetables
• Nuts
• Mono-unsaturated fats
• Tea
• Dark chocolate
• Omega 3-6 ratio
• Mediterranean diet
• Calorie restriction
• Anti-oxidants (in foods - not supplements)

To summarise, Inflammaging is the normal increase in metabolic inflammation as we grow older. But if we had a 'non-inflammatory' early life it goes up more slowly.

 Reversible
However, Inflammaging is reversible.

 To find out more just follow the links I have here or Google Inflammaging or Metaflammation.

Dengue Fever Remedy

Hydrotherapy cures Dengue in just three days.

Chikungunya and dengue are just two of the diseases carried by this Asian Tiger Mosquito. And it is coming to Australia! If you want to start to feel really uncomfortable read (or listen) to ""Dengue Epidemic" replayed this month on ABC Radio National. This little mossie is called the "barbecue stopper" because of their nasty sting. Even their name, Aedes, means "unpleasant".

The good news, after listening to that programme is that hydrotherapy treatments are effective for most fevers, I have had most experience with Dengue, but have treated glandular fever and childhood fevers.

The first important point about treating fevers with hydrotherapy is to begin as soon as the fever is detected. It doesn't matter what actually causes the fever, hydrotherapy is effective for most. An early start means that the disease is resolved more quickly, decreasing the chance of the serious complications like cerebral malaria and haemorrhagic dengue. Patients also miss out on those non-fatal but painful bone and joint pains in dengue and chikungunya.

Second, work out which sort of fever it is. In dengue (and all the other diseases mentioned in this post) it is commonly a Retention Fever with cold skin, shivering, goose bumps and chilly sensations.

Treatment is similar to my previous post on Malaria. That is, a Sweating Treatment followed by a Graduated Tonic Cold, daily for three days.

In practice this is the regime we used for dengue:
Russian Bath for 20 minutes, until sweating profusely, followed by Cold Mitten Friction, daily for three days. We never needed a fourth treatment as all the people we treated had recovered enough to leave hospital without any weakness or tiredness. This compares to the usual ten days in hospital followed by weeks of lethargy. Kellogg recommends using the Cholera treatment while febrile, which is a Hot Blanket Pack then Cold Mitten Friction.

For Glandular Fever I used a Hot Tub Bath until sweating, followed by a Cold Shower. Once again this was daily for three days when the patient was fully recovered and returned to work.

However you can use whatever Sweating Treatment is handy for you. The Sweating Pack is very good and Cold Pours are easily done after Packs and Tub Baths.

One reason that these treatments are so effective is that they really boost the immune system. The white cell count is often trebled by the third day. This was confusing for our referring doctors initially, as they thought the patients were developing another infection, when the patients were feeling quite well and eager to leave hospital.

Another important benefit of treating fevers with hydrotherapy is that the patient doesn't have to expend the huge amount of energy required to produce the fever needed to respond to the disease.

It is a surprise to most people that fevers are a good thing (as long as they don't get too high). Fevers are the front line of the immune response to infection and the hydrotherapy treatments listed here push heat into the body, assisting the rise in body temperature without the body having to work so hard. This is why there is less weakness or prostration after a fever treated with hydrotherapy.

I would love to hear of your experience with fevers so please leave a comment.

Morning Sickness Remedy

Heating Trunk Packs relieve nausea and pain during pregnancy.

More than half of all pregnant women suffer from morning sickness but the treatment typically aims "to lessen the symptoms of nausea, rather than attacking the root cause(s) of the nausea" (Wikipedia). This usually means that a mother suffers weeks of discomfort, and sometimes distress, during pregnancy. This can be avoided with hydrotherapy.

Dr Abbott, when talking about severe morning sickness (hyperemesis gravidarum), said the Hot and Cold Abdominal Pack is an "almost never-failing remedy".

When she is pregnant my wife has relatively mild morning sickness and used hydrotherapy in her last two pregnancies. One treatment would relieve morning sickness for about two weeks when it would be repeated with similar effects. She has used it on other women with similar results. All of the cases I am aware of were not severe, but they uniformly had relief.

For use at home, the Heating Trunk Pack is the safest and easiest. Because it seems a little complex to the beginner, I wrote up the full procedure. Kellogg says the cause of morning sickness is Celiac Congestion and so the treatments are all Vascular Antiphlogistics any of which would probably work so if you want to modify things then go ahead.

Please leave a comment if this treatment helps you, or someone you love, enjoy their pregnancy without the effects of nausea.

Malaria Treatment

A friend on the western border of Thailand sent me a email asking about treating malaria with hydrotherapy.

This makes sense because a lot of the malaria in this area is resistant to preventives and can lead to cerebral malaria, which if it doesn't kill, often leaves the person with major brain damage. I know this because I taught hydrotherapy up on the Burma border about 20 years ago and saw the results of malarial infection.

The Traditional Hydrotherapy page on Malaria lists a lot of treatment methods but basically it is a heating treatment until the patient starts sweating and then a Graduated Tonic Cold which is a short cold treatment. Then the patient is wrapped up warmly to sleep and for other treatments.

As with all treatment, the sooner it is started, the better. One of hydro's great advantages is that it doesn't interfere with other treatment and even if we have misdiagnosed, it won't cause any damaging side effects in most cases.

So... if it looks like it may be malaria, start treating it straight away before the patient gets weak.

On days 1,2 and 3 do something to get the patient sweating (but make sure they have a Cooling Compress on their head). The hill tribe people I worked with wrapped a patient in black polythene plastic out in the sunshine, to achieve sweating.

Once sweating started do a quick cold treatment. The tribe's people would quickly dunk them in the very cold river.

They are kept warm between treatments.

The principles are much the same for all fevers.
If you have experience at treating malaria successfully with hydrotherapy, please contact me.