In 1998 I was back in the States after 8 years away. Everybody at my aunt's house came down with the flu in turn except for me.
Somewhere I had read about Sacagawea, the Indian guide for Lewis and Clark, drinking a pint of oil to stave off sickness. (I could not find a trace of this anecdote when I looked it up on the web for this post.)
My aunt was cooking Spanish Rice that night and I persuaded her to leave in all the chicken skins because
1. The oil from chicken skins in chicken soup supposedly kills germs.
2. Nobody wants their chicken skins?! I will totally eat them for you.
That night I peeled and ate garlic after garlic with the chicken skins and rice.
In the middle of the night I woke up feeling royally indigested but I refused to get up and went back to sleep.
I was fine in the morning. My mom and sister were throwing up and my cousin would soon be incapacitated in agony, but I never came down with the flu.
Fast forward to last week.
The first we knew my sister was sick was when she started gagging over supper and ran to the bathroom but couldn't even throw up. She just sat on the sofa with a fever and tears running down her cheeks. I just held her and hugged her and kept giving her as many good things to sip as I could think of, a big dose of C, as high as I could safely give her of A, grapefruit seed extract in a cup of water, strong hot ginger tea, etc., and she was all well 2 days later.
It was the afternoon of that third day when I felt the distinct stirrings of nausea. I got to a stopping point on my laptop and took 2000 mg of C before I remembered I had to get some activated charcoal down me first.
If you've never heard of activated charcoal it's a backup that hospitals will give you for food poisoning if for some reason they can't pump your stomach. 2 decades ago my dad ate something bad and came racing home in a taxi with diarrhea. He took charcoal and then went right back to town that day.
I knew I really shouldn't take them together, the charcoal might try to absorb the C and the C might ruin the efficacy of the charcoal but I didn't want to go into this without charcoal.
20 minutes later the nausea was still there and had ratcheted up a notch. I imagined my forehead felt warmer than normal.
I peeled 2 garlic and ate the slices in between typing. When the garlic got too hot, I sliced 2 more garlic and swallowed them down like vitamin pills with a couple of glasses of water, trying to crush them a bit first with my teeth on the way. The nausea went away.
An hour or so later the nausea came back and I washed two more garlic down with water. Again the nausea went away.
At supper I was really hungry and knew it was my last chance to nip the flu in the bud if I didn't want to be throwing up my supper. I remembered my 1998 experience. I had no chicken skins but I had olive oil.
So I took about 5 tablespoons of leftover spaghetti-sauce-ground-beef-macaroni, poured 3 tablespoons of olive oil over it, some liberal pinches of salt, and 4 HEAPING tablespoons of some Parmesan cheese we had just got in the house for New Year's. I love me a little spaghetti with my Parmesan cheese, oil and salt ... it was scrumptious! Why hadn't I been doing this when I wasn't sick? Every bowl of food must taste better swimming in olive oil, Parmesan and salt.
It was so delicious I had two more bowls just like it, eating a clove of garlic with each bite, and then I finished it off with some fresh-ground hot coffee to make sure my stomach acids kicked in and digested the food before my body decided to be sick.
The nausea never came back!!! Not that night nor the next day.
I can only guess what my breath smelled like for Bible Class later but I was happily full and slept well all night, my forehead back to normal.
That was a total of about 15 cloves of garlic and almost 9 T of olive oil.
Somewhere I had read about Sacagawea, the Indian guide for Lewis and Clark, drinking a pint of oil to stave off sickness. (I could not find a trace of this anecdote when I looked it up on the web for this post.)
My aunt was cooking Spanish Rice that night and I persuaded her to leave in all the chicken skins because
1. The oil from chicken skins in chicken soup supposedly kills germs.
2. Nobody wants their chicken skins?! I will totally eat them for you.
That night I peeled and ate garlic after garlic with the chicken skins and rice.
In the middle of the night I woke up feeling royally indigested but I refused to get up and went back to sleep.
I was fine in the morning. My mom and sister were throwing up and my cousin would soon be incapacitated in agony, but I never came down with the flu.
Fast forward to last week.
The first we knew my sister was sick was when she started gagging over supper and ran to the bathroom but couldn't even throw up. She just sat on the sofa with a fever and tears running down her cheeks. I just held her and hugged her and kept giving her as many good things to sip as I could think of, a big dose of C, as high as I could safely give her of A, grapefruit seed extract in a cup of water, strong hot ginger tea, etc., and she was all well 2 days later.
It was the afternoon of that third day when I felt the distinct stirrings of nausea. I got to a stopping point on my laptop and took 2000 mg of C before I remembered I had to get some activated charcoal down me first.
If you've never heard of activated charcoal it's a backup that hospitals will give you for food poisoning if for some reason they can't pump your stomach. 2 decades ago my dad ate something bad and came racing home in a taxi with diarrhea. He took charcoal and then went right back to town that day.
I knew I really shouldn't take them together, the charcoal might try to absorb the C and the C might ruin the efficacy of the charcoal but I didn't want to go into this without charcoal.
20 minutes later the nausea was still there and had ratcheted up a notch. I imagined my forehead felt warmer than normal.
I peeled 2 garlic and ate the slices in between typing. When the garlic got too hot, I sliced 2 more garlic and swallowed them down like vitamin pills with a couple of glasses of water, trying to crush them a bit first with my teeth on the way. The nausea went away.
An hour or so later the nausea came back and I washed two more garlic down with water. Again the nausea went away.
At supper I was really hungry and knew it was my last chance to nip the flu in the bud if I didn't want to be throwing up my supper. I remembered my 1998 experience. I had no chicken skins but I had olive oil.
So I took about 5 tablespoons of leftover spaghetti-sauce-ground-beef-macaroni, poured 3 tablespoons of olive oil over it, some liberal pinches of salt, and 4 HEAPING tablespoons of some Parmesan cheese we had just got in the house for New Year's. I love me a little spaghetti with my Parmesan cheese, oil and salt ... it was scrumptious! Why hadn't I been doing this when I wasn't sick? Every bowl of food must taste better swimming in olive oil, Parmesan and salt.
It was so delicious I had two more bowls just like it, eating a clove of garlic with each bite, and then I finished it off with some fresh-ground hot coffee to make sure my stomach acids kicked in and digested the food before my body decided to be sick.
The nausea never came back!!! Not that night nor the next day.
I can only guess what my breath smelled like for Bible Class later but I was happily full and slept well all night, my forehead back to normal.
That was a total of about 15 cloves of garlic and almost 9 T of olive oil.
