We make ours from local elderberry trees we pick in the late summer. Most natural foods stores carry it as a bottled preparation. “Sambucol” is a common brand name:
https://sambucolusa.com/
When the supplies of elderberry syrup dry up, a good alternative is blackberry and chokeberry (AKA Aronia).
It’s the anthocyanin pigments in elderberries that are suspected to be responsible for their flu-fighting properties, specifically the cyanidin pigments. See The inhibitory performance of flavonoid cyanidin-3-sambubiocide against H274Y mutation in H1N1 influenza virus. and Anti-influenza activity of elderberry (Sambucus nigra).
You can see on a chart from this study of anthocyanins (Anthocyanin content and antioxidant activity of various red fruit juices) that both elderberries and chokeberries contain the highest content of total anthocyanins.
However, if the active flu-fighting anthocyanin component is the cyanidin 3-glucoside (cyn 3-glu), elderberries contain a much larger fraction of these sub-anthocynins than most other berries.
Blackberries have the next most cy-3-glu content, coming in a close second to elderberry.
Although there has been quite a bit of research into anthocyanin pigments in the last decade, how they work in the human body is still not well understood. For example, most anthocyanin pigments are never actually absorbed (in their intact form) into the blood stream. It is thought that they mainly act on the microbiome in the gut.
While chokeberries have only a small fraction of the specific cy-3-glu that elderberries contain, they do have an impressive amount of total cyanidin and anthocyanin concentrations. As anthocyanins are believed to act synergistically with one another, consuming a wide-spectrum of them is considered to be a good strategy.
You can buy dried chokeberries here. They are very bitter (hence the “choke”) but edible. Consuming the berry in it’s whole-food form, versus a syrup, is probably a better idea because you don’t really know how an extract is made. You can buy freeze-dried elderberries here.
I have several gallons of chokeberry juice in my chest-fridge (under the beer). I can’t find it any more to buy, but I’ve been saving it for just such an occasion. It really tastes horrible…cheers.
And put frozen blackberries on your shopping list at the grocery store too.
Hope this info helps and thank you Dr. M for your great work on this.
All the best…Jeff
I’m thinking of adding a tablespoon of dried elderberries to my nettle-calendula-ginger tea I brew up each day and carry around in a 2 quart ball jar. One tablespoon is about equivalent to Chris’ 1 ounce shot (a pound of dried berries fills a 1 quart jar just to the top and 1 pound (1 quart) of dried berries makes 2 quarts of syrup). I’ll boil everything for 5-1o minutes and then make sure to get all of the active ingredient by eating the cooked berries.
Thanks for posting the “rant.” This puts Chris on the record, on an issue that is not under the control of the Fed. We’ll see if he’s correct about this causing the death of millions of Americans, as the virus has already been detected in America. (I have no guess, and would not dare suggest he is wrong. I just don’t know.)
Shiv much?
My local Home Depot still has them in stock.
try hardware stores too.
No, I don’t think so. I just like the ability to gauge things against reality, and that is admittedly hard to do when someone makes economic predictions, but becomes easier when someone makes a science-based prediction on something that is somewhat related, at least, to a field in which they assert or asserted expertise.
As I said, I wouldn’t dare call Chris wrong. The parts of the crash course about which I have any knowledge at all make complete sense to me, and I have no reason to believe Chris is wrong about any of the rest. It’s just that now, after Peak Prosperity has become a site offering financial advice and such in addition to mere explanations of our predicament, here’s a way to check on one of his predictions.
Just to piss off the bureaucrats.
Rector
Chris, the Chinese were working with this virus in a biochemical lab in the same city where the virus suddenly appeared. And check out US involvement. Please see the links below. In other words, the virus could have been released through laboratory experimentation, purposely or unintentionally.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7922379/Chinas-lab-studying-SARS-Ebola-Wuhan-outbreaks-center.html
“Lab-Made Coronavirus Triggers Debate”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7922379/Chinas-lab-studying-SARS-Ebola-Wuhan-outbreaks-center.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7922379/Chinas-lab-studying-SARS-Ebola-Wuhan-outbreaks-center.html
Your insight on the coronavirus outbreak is appreciated, Chris.
Looks like China has gone full speed ahead with containment. The quarantine efforts should definitely help with slowing the spread of the virus. As of now there are 40 confirmed cases in Shanghai, which I’m watching very carefully as it’s a global city with a global reach. If Shanghai goes down then all bets are off. So far, looks like Wuhan has taken the brunt of the virus. It’s been completely closed off via martial law. Also the fact that there’s minimal cases in the US is comforting
It seems that this virus is worse than originally thought due to the long latency period and extremely high R0. There is something different besides merely a new epitope that has changed with this virus.
Since the viral sequence (and presumably variants) are known it will be very interesting to know :
- what has changed? For example, is viron assembly delayed a long time after infection and replication in a cell? Alternatively, how can the virus replicate, get exported into snot and saliva to cause infection, and yet not cause a sneeze or cough? What is the reason for long incubation time that elapses between infection and the kind of destruction that leads to coughing and fever? I don’t know anything about this, but am looking forward to a good review/reference. Maybe the Sandman has a review…
- was this change really a simple matter of Mr. Snake and Mrs. Bat virons getting it on with each other and making little Timmy hybrid product as an innocuous event at the meet market (pun intended)? Presumably a comparison of the published sequence(s) with known Coronas can shed some light on the possibility that the first P4 laboratory in China for fuc*ing around (again, pun intended) with the most toxic organisms known to mankind, (which recently opened 20 miles from the blamed animal marketplace source of infection) was responsible as a warfare experiment that literally leaked to the community. I wonder if the differences found can be easily explained as a random tryst of DNA from two or more species. Or, perhaps required some serious genetic engineering at multiple places that are not explained by a simple random event and natural selection…
China makes its first hazardous microbe lab, and which (according to a Canadian) accepts a shipment of Corona viruses. A year or two later, this is observed 20 miles away and the central government admonishes a cuisine TV star for teaching people to eat bats as a way to prevent this problem. Like most things discussed at PP, the coincidences are really too much to ignore…
I ordered a box of 20 N95 masks, on-line, from O’Reilly Autoparts. $19.95 + tax and shipping (about $28.00 total). It remains to be seen if they actually get delivered on Wednesday.
Looks like China has gone full speed ahead with containment. The quarantine efforts should definitely help with slowing the spread of the virus. As of now there are 40 confirmed cases in Shanghai, which I’m watching very carefully as it’s a global city with a global reach. If Shanghai goes down then all bets are off. So far, looks like Wuhan has taken the brunt of the virus. It’s been completely closed off via martial law. Also the fact that there’s minimal cases in the US is comfortingI agree with all of that. Militating against this relief is my profound distrust of every institution involved controlling the information. Also there's the fact that China - presumably in possession of the real info - is aggressively quarantining it's ... well... basically it's entire country now. I am 100% confident that China has been under representing the true case figures, both for exposures and for deaths. As well, the numbers aren't adding up. Every video sneaked out (they are quickly removed from Twitter, presumably by @jack placating Chinese authorities) shows every hospital in Wuhan completely filled to overflowing with people dying in hallways. Officially there are roughly 2000 cases (1975 as of last night). Wuhan has +49,000 hospital beds throughout its vast hospital system. I know it's a big city of 11 million and many of those beds were already filled with other patients, but really? With 80% of cases being reported as "not severe" that leaves 200 severe cases. Those resolve over 11-15 days. We're 46 days into this crisis, so many of those 200 putative critically sick people have recovered and moved on. Are we to believe that less than fewer than 200 bedridden 2019-ncov victims have totally overwhelmed a 49,000 bed hospital system? I sure don't. So the next question is "just how badly under reported is this thing?" If it's 10x under reported, then that would mean 2,000 critically ill people. Is that enough to swamp a 49,000 bed system? I don't know, I'll leave that to our hospital experts and authorities, but it's at least a more realistic place to begin the conversation. Is the right number 15x under reported? 20x? I just don't know yet. But those are the sorts of numbers that comport with China yanking the emergency brake, declaring a Level 1 emergency for its largest of cities including Beijing, and throwing their economy roughly into the dashboard. The economic impacts are going to be really harsh. That's not done lightly. Which means this pandemic is real. That's my thinking.
My experience during many hours wearing N95 respirators during construction, woodworking, etc. is that you want the ones WITH an exhalation valve. They’re more comfortable, they don’t steam up your eye protection and you can feel the ones without pushing away from your face when you exhale.
We also keep a supply of N100 (which are quite expensive) specifically for pandemics. Bought ours a long time ago so I’m concerned about their disintegration over time so am buying more. I’ve bought a lot of this kind of stuff at Northern Safety. Maybe a little pricey but good selection and service. They’ve already put a limit on purchase quantities of some N95 masks…
Lowes has these
Put posting anyway just in case.
https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/how-china-hiding-true-number-coronavirus-deaths
From FluTrackers.com this morning (posted by tetano at 2:51 am) , quoting A Director of Infectious Diseases at a Chinese University.
Expert: New coronaviruses are infectious [even] when they do not have any typical symptoms during the incubation period Published: 2020-01-26 14:35:08 'We encountered a patient who came to Hangzhou from Wuhan to attend a conference. When he arrived in Hangzhou, he did not have any symptoms. He did not have the typical symptoms of cough and fever. But it didn't take long before several colleagues he had contacted were infected Symptoms appeared one after another. But at this time, he still did not have the disease himself. After returning to Wuhan at the end of the meeting, he did not get the disease after another two days. http://news.china.com.cn/2020-01/26/...t_75650029.htmWhew. This makes you want to ratchet up your isolation efforts.
it took the HIV epidemic to cause health care workers to act as if everyone might have something transmissible with respect to blood products. now it seems we need to practice that with everyone with respect to respiratory contamination.
Sand-puppy you and the other medical docs/healers have done a standup job here just wanted to extend my gratitude to all of you. And of course to Chris and Adam.
New Research Casts Doubt Coronavirus Epidemic Started At Wuhan Food Market
I never quite know what to make of Zerohedge, but here’s their offering anyway.