Post by MagnetMan on Mar 1, 2008 20:46:09 GMT -5
I have no clinical evdience for any of the following, just sixty years of suffering with both at least once a year.
I have theory, based on observation.
Many years ago as young man propsecting for diamonds in East Africa, I occassionally forgot to take may daily dose of quinine and consequently went down with malaria.
Malaria feels like flu - double up the aching joints a few times.
The first two times I got it I happened to be in base camp. With plenty of tablets availaible, I got over it in three or four days.
The third time was a kicker. I got it while alone in a fly camp, fifty miles from base and had no extra quinine. None of my prospecting crew of Africans knew how to drive the Landrover, so I was stuck with the fever.
I remained in a semi-coma for about ten days. My cookboy saved my bacon. I have vague memories of him coming in and out of my tent every few hours to change my sweat-saturated sheets. Then alternately piling blankets on me when I got the shivvers. He forced me to drink some fruit concentrate to keep me from getting entirely dehydrated. I lost 40lbs but finally made a full recovery under my own steam.
That experience taught me something about how the body reacts to a harmful parasite attack when left to fight without outside help. I think harmful parasites survive in the human body within a very narrow temperature range, maybe one or two degrees above or below 98.6 F.
The body reacts to an attack by raising its temperature high enough and long enough to kill the attacker. The shivvers in malaria is the body switching into reverse and going hyper thermic to further confound and combat the alien attack (This might of all be common knowledge of course.)
My personal cure for colds and flu follows down the same path.
Get in a sauna and raise your body temperature as high as you can stand it for as long as you can 101,F. ( Three or four hours]
Alternatively lower your body temperature two or three degrees in an ice bath for as long as you can stand it. 96, F.
Alternate the two extremes every two hours if you can.
I have theory, based on observation.
Many years ago as young man propsecting for diamonds in East Africa, I occassionally forgot to take may daily dose of quinine and consequently went down with malaria.
Malaria feels like flu - double up the aching joints a few times.
The first two times I got it I happened to be in base camp. With plenty of tablets availaible, I got over it in three or four days.
The third time was a kicker. I got it while alone in a fly camp, fifty miles from base and had no extra quinine. None of my prospecting crew of Africans knew how to drive the Landrover, so I was stuck with the fever.
I remained in a semi-coma for about ten days. My cookboy saved my bacon. I have vague memories of him coming in and out of my tent every few hours to change my sweat-saturated sheets. Then alternately piling blankets on me when I got the shivvers. He forced me to drink some fruit concentrate to keep me from getting entirely dehydrated. I lost 40lbs but finally made a full recovery under my own steam.
That experience taught me something about how the body reacts to a harmful parasite attack when left to fight without outside help. I think harmful parasites survive in the human body within a very narrow temperature range, maybe one or two degrees above or below 98.6 F.
The body reacts to an attack by raising its temperature high enough and long enough to kill the attacker. The shivvers in malaria is the body switching into reverse and going hyper thermic to further confound and combat the alien attack (This might of all be common knowledge of course.)
My personal cure for colds and flu follows down the same path.
Get in a sauna and raise your body temperature as high as you can stand it for as long as you can 101,F. ( Three or four hours]
Alternatively lower your body temperature two or three degrees in an ice bath for as long as you can stand it. 96, F.
Alternate the two extremes every two hours if you can.
