Mods.. if you want to move this to the doctor's office or wherever, go right ahead. I think it's important enough I'd like people to see it...

Hubby is still fighting the flu, but was somewhat worse last night... not surprising since we finally finished haying and chores around 10 pm, and he spent almost 9 hours in the hot sun on the tractor. I did send elderberry back in gatorade every few hours, and it's clearly keeping this whole bug under control, but certainly not as well as if he was able to REST.

Last night a very odd symptom showed up, though... severely inflamed joints! I mean, elbows, wrists, every finger joint, hips, base of his spine... they all were red hot to the touch, very painful, and he said, difficult to move "felt swollen (but they weren't, at least not visibly) and stiff".

I gave him the usual herbal meds as well as OTC meds, including ibuprofen and sudafed, and a massage. After about 20 minutes I thought "hmmm... if this IS actually an inflammatory process from the virus (and I suspected it was, because I had severe spinal and nerve pain for several days when I had the bug, and it took almost another week to resolve after I felt fine otherwise)... I wonder if curcumin (from turmeric) would help? It's reputed to help with a cytokine storm, which of course is simply a serious inflammatory reaction in the lungs. Fortunately, this hasn't gone into his lungs!

So, since nothing else was helping (we even were using ice packs, the heat and pain was that bad), I gave him 900 mgs of curcumin (3 capsules) and 10 mgs of piperine (a black pepper extract that increases the absorption of the curcumin by 2000% (lab proof of that). I'm not sure how much effect we really expected... but I can say neither of us expected the heat and pain to almost totally fade within the next 2 hours!

Now, it's easy enough to say "but... he took ibuprofen! That's what did it"... except he'd been taking that pretty much every 4 hours all day, and it didn't stop the inflammation from developing or help knock it down.

It's certainly possible that the symptom was only temporary anyway, and this was purely coincidental. We DO take curcumin occasionally for inflammatory pain (old injuries) and it works for that, and I really do think it was the main "cure" last night.

So.... FWIW. I'm absolutely making sure I'll have plenty of the standardized turmeric capsules in my preps. If anyone is interested, here is where I get it:
http://www.wonderlabs.com/itemleft.p...FRLoxgodTBBnyg

Unfortunately, they don't sell the piperine, which I get here: http://www.vitacost.com/Source-Natur...S|p|1742929481

These folks have a combination product... I personally wouldn't use it by choice, because I want to be able to take as much of the curcumin as I feel necessary, and while it's impossible to overdose on that herb, it IS possible to take too much piperine. But, it may be convenient enough for most that I'll post the link:
http://www.puritan.com/pages/iq.asp?...perine&rdcnt=1

MAXIMUM dose of the piperine is 20 mgs daily, and it's highly recommended to not take more than 10 mgs. For folks taking Rx meds... DO NOT TAKE PIPERINE without discussing it with your doc, or using the 'net to check for "interactions'. IT CAN CHANGE ABSORPTION OF SOME DRUGS!!!

Summerthyme