Nutraceuticals and nootropics for anti-aging

Green tea extract should be in your bird-flu survival kit

While we all hope that the looming pandemic of Avian Influenza (‘bird flu’) will limit itself to just looming and not actually happening, it makes sense to prepare for a worst-case scenario — a highly lethal disease that is very contagious and for which no vaccine is available. Of course, most people will make few or no preparations at all, and when the pandemic hits will look for governmental action to protect them. But others, less given to living in a fantasy world, are already making their own preparations.

The question then arises as to whether one should just try to ride out the pandemic by staying strictly at home, receiving no visitors, and thereby avoiding any risk of infection, or instead be willing to go out in public and rely on anti-flu treatments in case one catches the flu. The trouble with the first concept is that, despite one’s intention to live in isolation, unpredictable circumstances may make it impossible to stay at home for weeks at a time. Therefore, one really should try to stockpile some effective flu remedies if such things exist and are affordable.

The trouble is, the flu treatments that are widely considered to be the most effective — antivirals such as Tamiflu and Relenza — are actually not known to be effective at all for treating the pandemic strain of bird flu. The reason is that the pandemic strain doesn’t yet exist — it has yet to evolve from the existing strains of bird flu. There is no way to test Tamiflu on a nonexistent strain of flu virus. Furthermore, Tamiflu is very hard to make and is therefore in short supply and will continue to be for several years. Relenza is in even shorter supply.

There are, however, other alternatives, several of which are discussed on this website.¹ One of those alternatives is the substance EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate), the principal constituent in Green Tea Extract.

Researchers at Yonsei University in Korea have shown EGCG to be an extremely powerful inhibitor of several strains of flu viruses, including two of those that have been historically most deadly to humans: the H1N1 strain that caused the 1918 ‘Spanish’ flu pandemic, and the H3N2 strain that caused the 1968 ‘Hong Kong’ flu pandemic.^2,3 The mechanism involved appears to be two-pronged: EGCG is an inhibitor of the neuraminidase enzyme which flu viruses use to replicate themselves; and it also clings to the surface of viral particles, causing them to clump together and to fall prey to destruction by the immune system instead of infecting more cells.

This is welcome news to those who are looking for something affordable and available to which they can turn in case someone in their household becomes infected during a pandemic in which hospitals will be turning people away. It should go without saying, of course, that this treatment has not been tested against the strain of flu that will cause the pandemic, since that strain has not yet evolved. But it is one of several promising treatments that should be considered when putting together a survival kit for the pandemic.

References

[1] Ask Dr. Zarkov [2005/11] LifeLink website

[2] Antiviral effect of catechins in green tea on influenza virus. Antiviral Res. 2005 Nov;68(2):66-74. Epub 2005 Aug 9.

[3] Green tea helps fight the flu Health Sentinel, November 29, 2005

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LifeLink carries green tea extract in 500 mg capsules.