Washington Homeopathic Products Joe Lillard wins West Virginia small business person of the year.  Washington Homeopathic Products is based in Berekely Springs, West Virginia.  Joe and his wife started a homeopathic pharmacy with one small store in 1991 with 5 employees.  Since then the business has grown to 35 employees with a multi million dollar operation.  This award was given to Joe by the small business administration. To find more about this business, you can visit Washington Homeopathic website at www.homeopathyworks.com.

  Hmedicine.com previous swine flu article became extremely popular.  The comments were great and made me realize that not enough information on the swine flu was really given.  I could write more about the H1N1 virus.  However, there are great websites to look at that can give better information than our company can.  This article will cover a few of the websites and we will try to describe the contents of these sites.

  The first site I found interesting was www.swinefluremedies.org.  This website contains information about how you can boost your immune system to help fight the swine flu.  It list supplements, homeopathy medicine and other types of medicines to fight the swine flu.  The website also has breaking information on the swine flu such as how much as spread, where is it spreading and is it contained.  Also, the website has tips on talking to your kids about swine flu.  The website contains information such as what are the symptoms of swine flu and what actions to take if you catch the flu.  This site also has a RSS feed so when a new article is posted, you will be notified.

    Another website that most people know about is the Center for Diesease Control website.  Their link to the swine flu outreak is http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/.  This website lists how far the swine flu has reached in the US.  It tells which states the swine flu has spread the most.  The website maps out all the US states and lists the number of occurences of the swine flu in each state.  The website updates their numbers periodically.  This site also has some basic general information on the swine flu but I found swinefluremedies.org to be more informative.  

  The final swine flu website of interest is http://www.medicinenet.com/swine_flu/article.htm.  This site is a very thorough informational site.  It contains many frequently asked questions to the swine flu such as how long is the infectous period and when you should go see a doctor?  The website throughly describes the swine flu so anyone that visits this website will have an understanding of this virus.  This website unlike the previous two sites does not contain really any breaking news on the swine flu. 

  There are also numerous other sites with swineflu information.  I just listed three good ones that I had found.  If you know of some other good websites with swineflu information, please list them in the comment section.  

  Swine Flu is actually a strand of a flu virus called H1N1.  This H1N1 is a mutation of the swine flu virus.  Pigs typically carry this strand of virus.  This virus generally will not kill pigs.  Humans rarely contract swine flu.  Swine flu can not be caught by eating pork products.  Swine flu is only contracted via air born.  The current strand (2009) is assumed to have started near Mexico city at a pig farm owned by a US company.  However, no pigs were have to been found in the H1N1 virus.  Closed areas are places were swine flu can spread rapidly.  Areas such as subways, buses, planes, office buildings are places where the H1N1 virus can spread since they are enclosed.   

  H1N1 virus effects people almost identically to the flu influenza.  People that may contacted the H1N1 virus experience fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue.  Allopathic solutions for the swine flu outbreak include  Tamiflu (oseltamivir) or Relenza (zanamivir).  These drugs can potentially shorten the duration of the swine flu by a day.  The side effects of these drugs include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, bronchitis, stomach pain, dizziness and headache.  Most people make a full recovery from H1N1 without the use of any drugs at all. 

  Oscillococcinum is a very popular homeopathic drug that is used to shorten the duration of the regular flu virus.  This drug has been proven in several trials to reduce the duration of the influenza virus by about 6 hours without any side effects.  However, this drug has never been tested on H1N1 virus.  Oscillococcinum also claims to prevent the flu but trials have shown no evidence of flu prevention with this drug.

 Homeopathy was used effectively in the Spanish flu outbreak in 1918.   The homeopathy mortatily rate was 1%.  This was much lower than the rate of death used with conventionally medicine.  The homeopathic remedies used to treat this flu outbreak were Byronia and Gelsemium.  Most cases used Gelsemiun to treat the spanish flu.  These remedies are also commonly used to treat the common flu.

  Contrary to popular belief, there is no vaccine for the H1N1.  There is really no way to prevent people from catching the swine flu other than avoiding contact with people that have caught the diesease.  You can boost up your immune system by taking vitamin C, beta carotein, vitamin D and antioxidants.  This help you better fight off the H1N1 virus.

  For healthy individuals with strong immune systems, the swine flu is really nothing to worry about.  Most people in the US that have contracted the swine flu have survived without any issues.  The common flu has killed far more people than the swine flu has.