Like many brilliant men with stomach flu before me, such as Eddie Izzard, I believe that most problems and their solutions come down to Monkeys. -And The French.
Okay, I’ve had this more than once this year and it’s been excruciating.
It’s also No Fun to hear of your friends and relatives writing writhing in agony when waiting seems to be the only strategy & Advil + Pepto doesn’t work that well.
So, with their bandmate Eddie, (he’d probably play bass) I’d like return to the Monkeys.
Animal Planet Stomach Flu Moment:
It turns out there are some localized troupes of Vervets or Macaques, or whatever; they’re all Cheeky Monkeys anyway; who -Eat Clay- before and after consuming a certain vegetation.
When I was little, you might have inferred I was trying to learn their lesson -if not everything- via Darwin and his principle of Natural Selection; ie: “Is it lethal?” -“Dunno. -Eat it and find out!”.
->Similarly, my band of Cheeky Vervets learnt their lesson the same way. Only the dumb ones died and I survived; go figure. -It turns out they can consume otherwise Toxic vegetation and still pull the nutrients out of it, — If they just eat a little Clay with it, which soaks up all the poison right out of the greens.
Can Chemistry Cure Stomach Flu?:
How? The science is Absorption and Adsorption. Basically it means something that soaks other things up with both Huge Surface Area and Ionic Charges on the exposed molecules.
-And many types of clay have Both properties in truly Massive proportions.
->SO: I’m thinking, “Why can’t I be a Cheeky Monkey, too?”
And since Antibiotics will not mitigate Viral Gastroenteritis/Stomach Flu, the answer could be: Finding The Right Clay; -right?
And that’s where the monkeys seemed to get out of hand and things just blew up.
Kaopectate, which had Kaolin clay in the original formula, turns out is not recommended for Stomach Flu / Viral Gastroenteritis.
DAMN!
And when scientists studied other clays in cows, they had this to say:
“Results revealed that all the adsorbent agents had good to excellent capability of adsorbing rotavirus and excellent capability of adsorbing coronavirus.
Percent adsorptions ranged from 78.74% to 99.89% for rotavirus and 99.99% for coronavirus; while sand (negative control) was <0.01%. A high affinity binding was present as determined by a low percent desorption (0.06–3.09%).
However, the adsorbent bound virus complex retained, and may have actually enhanced, infectivity.“ –sciencedirect
F***!
So it turns out, there is only mixed anecdotal evidence at best for Clay remedies:
“Having clay mixed with water is very good to prevent gastroenteritis.” – healthguidance.org
“I continued to give her Bentonite for another day at least ans she seemed fine. Sunday morning she puked again as we were about to go out the door so I gave her another dose and that was the end of it. I’m impressed with bentonite clay!”- welltellme-Bentonite
The only hope I have for clay is that the tests were done on cows. Since I have 4 fewer stomachs, maybe there’s a chance?
I Do still wonder if there’s some type of Dosage Balance that can be struck to keep things ‘moving’ in the GI tract, but still ingest enough clay to ad/ab-sorb all the buggies.
=>So: The next time I get Stomach Flu/Viral Gastroenteritis, I’ll use myself as a Human Guinea Pig and try either Calcium Montmorillonite (not Sodium Montmorillonite or Bentonite), the Green Russian Stuff, or maybe Activated Charcoal.
***In other Weird but Promising anecdotal experiments I may try if Clay doesn’t turn out:
*One guy decided he was going to do the old hiker’s, “sterilize my water with 2 drops Tincture of Iodine”, and he says that seemed to help. -Sounds dangerous but, hmmm…
*My truest Princess Leia moment comes down to the product Enzymedica has out called Virastop that a few people absolutely swore by. The page says it works on Protease. ***Honestly, this seems like the best hope so far.
Otherwise, this entry may just become a Work-In-Progress as time goes on, either being republished with new info; -or a string of linked articles on the subject.
***It is definitely prudent to at least be a little skeptical of all the wacky, rambling sites out there (shirleyswellness, cough, cough) that say clay can do everything from make your brain run faster, to jumpstarting a Volvo 240 Station Wagon.
****Also, remember if you take any kind of ad/ab-sorbent, it’s going to soak up EVERYTHING (depending on the electrical charge), including your vitamins, supplements and prescription medications.
So be Extra sure to check with your doctors about exactly what you’re allowed to have and not have if you take medication of any kind to get rid of stomach flu.
Photo Credits:
“Lemur”, by Quentin Houyoux
“Smoking Chimp”, Fox News Screencap
“Olivia Munn as Princess Leia”, by Ken Vs. Ryu
Links:
•Enyzmedica Virastop
•Stomach Flu Discussion at WellTellMe
•Regenerativenutrition-Gastroenteritis
•Regenerativenutrition-Clay
•Terramin Clays
•Some Natural Recs at Yahoo Health AU
Scientific Journal Links:
•PubMed
•ScienceDirect
•BioInfoBank
•NCBI
•Clay In Digestive Disturbances (old)
Wacky But Interesting Links:
•Shirley’s Wellness-Clay
•Idaho Observer-Clay
Other:
•BTW, Lemurs and Meerkats Are significantly more reliable than Monkeys.
I am fortunate enough to have full access to the study that you mentioned, and was able to read the actual data.
First of all, it turns out that the infectivity studies were done in vitro, and as far as I can tell, only measured the ability of antibodies to react to the viruses, and not the ability of the virus to reach, bind to, or infect cells along the intestinal lining; although, it is a dense read, and I’m still going through it.
Lucky for all of us, Charcoal was not only the best at adsorbing the viruses studied (and also the lowest at desorbing), but it reduced the infectivity by almost 5 times! That’s the only material studied to do so.
Oh, and I can’t find the study at the moment, but proteases were actually tested for enterovirus effectiveness in gerbils I believe, and it was found that proteases significantly INCREASE symptoms and virus levels, killing most of the rodents studied. Proteases might be an effective immune boosting tool once they reach your bloodstream, but they do you no good in the digestive tract. Another study showed this to be the same case for Salmonella.
Awesome Comment Zach!!
You sir are a star!
Thanks very much; Best,
-Will