Welcome to the Dr. Berg's Healthy Keto and Interminute Fasting podcast, where Dr. Berg takes you on the journey for the truth about getting healthy and losing healthy weight.

There was a study done on 500 patients with the flu, comparing echinacea to the drug Tamiflu.

And Tamiflu is mainly for influenza, the flu, and many times they give it to a patient if you're

exposed to the virus, yet you haven't had the

symptoms yet. And this is what they found. Echinacea had the same efficacy as Tamiflu in

decreasing the symptoms of the flu with reduced risk of the complications. In other words,

they found that echinacea had less side effects. Surprise. Now, what are the side effects of Tamiflu?

We have nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness, headaches, nosebleeds, insomnia, respiratory problems, and the flu.

And I just want to mention before trying any of these natural recommendations, check with your doctor first.

But how does echinacea function? Well, it has antiviral effects. It even improves cold symptoms

like sneezing and sinus pressure. It has anti-inflammatory effects, very, very powerful ones

if you're using the roots. It has some anti-migraine effects. And it actually

enhances the immune system directly by increasing monocytes. Monocytes are baby macrophages,

which act very similar to that computer game Pac-Men, where they go around and they just eat up

things. So monocytes turn into phagocytes, which basically

eat pathogens. Now echinacea also can stimulate neutrophils. Now, neutrophils are usually seen in the

acute phase where you have a lot of inflammation in the first part of the infection. And neutrophils

mainly do three things. They can eat pathogens, number one. Number two, they release

little chemicals that kill pathogens, like antimicrobials. And number three, they throw this little

net over the pathogen to encapsulate it and trap it. And there's certain chemicals in there that

they can then dissolve the pathogen. Quite interesting.

And lastly, echinacea can stimulate your natural killer cells, which mainly do two things.

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