ILI: My personal experience;Part 4-Alliin and alkalizing foods

I have also given my children garlic supplements. I believed that garlic is a potent immune system stimulant and a natural antibiotic. Garlic contains an amino acid derivative 'alliin'. When the effect of alliin is observed on blood cells, a noted increase in the engulfing capacity of phagocyting cells is seen.
When garlic is crushed or damaged, the enzyme alliinase converts alliin to allicin. Thus it is important to choose a supplement which still contain alliin, and this can happen only if the garlic is freeze-dried before pulverised and made into pills. Garlic oil or pearls may be good for your heart but it may not have anti-bacterial or anti-viral properties.
Allicin itself has powerful anti bacterial and anti -fungal properties.
Garlic not only has anti-fungal, anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties, but also has more than 70 sulfur-containing compounds that help the body make other immune-stimulating compounds such as cysteine and glutathione.

Garlic is also an alkalizing food. Our body is alkaline by design and acid by function. Maintaining proper alkalinity is essential for life, health, and vitality. Simply put - an imbalance of alkalinity creates a condition favorable to the growth of bacteria, yeast, viruses and other unwanted organisms. All leading biochemists and medical physiologists have recognized pH (or the acid-alkaline balance) as the most important aspect of a balanced and healthy body. They have long known that the maintenance of an alkaline pH in our tissues and cells is critical to cellular health.
All the cells (billions of them) that make up the human body are slightly alkaline, and must maintain alkalinity in order to function and remain healthy and alive. However their cellular activity creates acid and this acid is what gives the cell energy and function. As each alkaline cell performs its task, it secretes metabolic wastes, and these end products of cellular metabolism are acid in nature.
An acidic, anaerobic (lacking oxygen) body environment encourages the breeding of fungus, mold, bacteria, and viruses. One way to keep our body's biological terrain at a healthy alkaline environment is eating alkalizing foods including lots of green foods.

Many of us must have received an email about a student who had suffered from H1N1 but was not given any appropriate treatment for a week in a hospital, he was nearing death, until he was taken home and an Ustaz recommended him to eat 6 apples a day! He recovered a few days later.
I have also bought a lot of green apples for my children too. Perhaps green apples are more alkaline than ripe red apples, definitely it is in the list of alkalizing foods that we should consume! Apples are not only alkalizing, but each apple contains some 15 mg of Vitamin C, and a whole load of rich phytochemicals! However, make sure you consume everything, skin and all, except the seeds, as the phytonutrients are rich at the rind and pits.
I am glad that I have decided to change the diet of my family many months ago, after attending a 2-day wellness workshop under the patronage of open university. Thus I have groomed my family to love eating green foods, such as lettuces, delicious crispy romaine salads, and not forgetting our own "salads", our ulam kampung. My children may be weird as they even love eating the bitter pegaga with dinner!! These ulams are packed with perhaps 100s of phytonutrients!!

ILI: My personal experience- Part 3:Boosting immunity

I have given my children natural organic multi-vitamin and multi-mineral supplement as well as extra doses of Vitamin C. Vitamin C has well been known to boost up the immune system. When the word "vitamin" is mentioned, people would be thinking "pill". The more educated modern people would probably think " US RDA" ( now, its RDI, US Reference Daily Intake) . The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has formulated recommended consumption levels for vitamins called recommended daily allowances (RDA). But we must understand that these allowances do not account for the amount needed to maintain maximum health, rather than 'borderline' health, only the amount needed to prevent deficiency diseases such as beri-beri, rickets or scurvy.
Larger doses of vitamins can help our body work better. Holistic medicine practitioners and wellness experts talk about ODA instead of RDA. Optimum Daily Allowances are the amounts of micronutrients needed to achieve optimal and vibrant good health. For example, the RDA for Vitamin C is a mere 60 mg, well, enough to prevent scurvy, however, ODA requires you to consume more than 2000 mg. To boost up your immune system ,you must take at least 1500 mg per day.
The immune system is a complex and amazing body system that protects us from bacteria, viruses, toxins, and other dangerous pathogens (germs). Holistic medicine recognizes that illness is not caused by viruses and bacteria, but rather by weakened immune systems. For example, all medical practitioners agreed that cancer is a disease which resulted from the immune system that has gone terribly wrong.
Viamin C is one of the top immune boosters available. Vitamin C increases the production of infection-fighting white blood cells and antibodies and increases levels of interferon, the antibody that coats cell surfaces, preventing the entry of viruses.
However, when you choose a multi-vitamin supplement, you must choose a supplement which is made from natural sources.
Studies have shown that protein-bonded vitamins, as found in natural whole food supplements, are absorbed, utilized, and retained in the tissues better than supplements that are not protein-bonded. Chemical derived or synthetic vitamins are not protein-bonded.
Man-made synthetic ascorbic acid are manufactured in the lab, and many of this cheap local products also contain artificial colourings and flavors.

I have chosen a Vitamin C supplement which also contain fruit and vegetable extracts that are rich in phytonutrients such as bioflavonoids. The bioflavonoids are helpful in the absorption of vitamin C and protect the multifunctional vitamin C molecule from oxidation, thereby improving and prolonging its functioning. Flavonoids have been referred to as "nature's biological response modifiers" because of strong experimental evidence of their inherent ability to modify the body's reaction to allergens, viruses, and carcinogens. They show anti-allergic, anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial and anti-cancer activity.
Bioflavonoids function synergistically with Vitamin C in regard to maintaining healthy capillaries, to help form collagen in connective tissue, to help heal wounds, and to support a healthy immune system. These bioflavonoids increase intracellular Vitamin C levels, thus preventive damages to the cell by viruses.

Selamat Hari Raya Aidil Fitri

Jika ....

ada langkah yang mengguris hati,

ada tingkah laku yang membekas luka,

ada lisan yang tak terjaga,

ada janji yang tak tertunai,

ada hati yang berperangsangka

serta ucapan berbunga dusta,

mohon dibukakan pintu kemaafan.....

Salam Aidil Fitri, maaf dazhir batin.......

ILI: My personal experience- Part 2:Organic Supplements

The next day, my Form Three son, Hasan, complained that he had chills the whole night before I woke him up for sahur. A couple of hours later his body temperature began to rise rapidly. He was having similar ILI. On Friday, three other sons of mine began to have fever. Habibi , my 13 year-old son, complained of having body aches all-over for the past 3 days, and finally was down with similar high fever. My third son, Dzil, 22, who is in his first semester doing his first degree, began to complain of excruciating pain in the back, which he said later, he had never experienced such a terrible back ache. I had to go to office first, and when I came back at 11 am to bring them to a clinic, Umair also complained of feeling feverish. Umair is my second son who is now in his final year pursuing his first degree in UiTM. Now all my 6 sons was having ILI, but I will just take care of them myself. My house was then full of sick boys who coughed deep and dry, sporadically and sometimes together, filling the house with deafening brazen noise like the long deep trumpeting snort of American white buffaloes or leucistic bisons.
Although I worry about the recovery of my sons, I have high hopes and believe that if I can assist my children to boost up their immune system, I can save them from aggravating towards dangerous deterioration.
Actually I was not sure who actually brought this A-virus to my family. Perhaps it was my elder daughter. About a week earlier, both my daughters, Maryam,20, and Fatimah, 17, were down with flu. They had high fever, headaches, and were coughing quite badly. Besides taking them to a clinic for medicines, I had told them to take Vitamin C and Garlic. With disciplined consumption of the organic supplements, both my daughters recovered quickly in 3 days.

Spectacle of Death....

Last Friday, 11th Sept., I came home from the terawih prayers and while resting in the TV room, watched Al-Hidayah. The Ustaz were discussing about Death, and the signs before death comes, at it was a very good tazkirah for me. However the discussion on tv reminded me of my visit to the graveyard one day after my father-in-law died. My father-in-law, or Bak, as we called him, died in hospital a few days after he fell from a slippery rambutan tree after a rainy day, to pick some rambutan fruits for his grandchildren. Bak had placed a lot of large rough stones under the tree to prevent erosion as the tree grew on a 15 degree slope next to the house. He had suffered from fractured spine and skull.
We all went to the graveyard on his burial day, but I went to his grave the next day alone to give him last respect and read the Yaasin again, and perform more supplications. When I laid the tikar and began to sit, suddenly my hand was bitten by an ant ,or was it an arachnid?? It was rather large for an ant, but it had a large rounded abdomen, and the bite was very painful ,and the bitten area was on fire. The poison must have been really strong. I didnt kill the creature but just threw it away, and nursed my hand till it felt better. I continued to read my Yaasin and made doa, and I left soon after. The graveyard was a small hilly area in Batu 3, Shah Alam, and we had to climb up a flight of white concrete stairs on the slope that rises immediately beside the roadside. As I climbed down the stairs, I was horrified to see several large black scorpions in the dry drain that ran right under the last step of the concrete stairs.
It had transcended on me after watching Al-Hidayah that night, that; what I had experienced and saw was a special reminder from Allah azza wa Jalla.....
Could the fiery poisonous spider-ant, and the large black scorpions the creatures that will taunt and sting the dead within the realms of the Barzakh....??

ILI: My personal experience- Part 1

In the second and third week of Ramadan, 6 of my children were down with ILI (influenza-like illness). Perhaps it is H1N1 as all the major symptoms were there. It started last Sunday, 30th August when my eldest son, Imran, 25, who shuttles daily to KL where he works, with his motorbike, was seen very quiet and spent the whole day sleeping. I only knew he was having high fever and body aches the next day when Habibi, my 13 year-old son told me about him. He was coughing profusely, and the buffooning noise of his dry cough was very deafening.
Three days later, on Tuesday night, my 8-year old son, Abdurrahman, or Tommy as we used to call him, complained of being very tired, and later at bed time, his body temperature begin to rise rapidly. His forehead and his entire body was on fire, and that made me very worried. He complained of having a bad headache and became very restless. I gave him a couple of paracetamol and my wife coaxed him to sleep. The next morning he was so weak, he could hardly walk. I had to carry him to the car and brought him to a clinic and the doctor routinely gave the usual concoction for flu; painkillers for fever, antihistamine for runny nose or cold, expectorant for cough and antibiotics. I was worried about Tommy as he is only 8, and his immune system is not well developed yet. Tommy as my youngest son is very close to me, and I love him dearly. He is vey naughty and mischievous whenever I’m around. My wife said if I were away, whether coming late from work or away outstation for a few days, Tommy would behave like what a good boy should be, he would do his school homework, no mischieves, and come to bed with her quietly to sleep. However as soon as I arrive home, he would get excited, and begin to do a lot of naughty mischievous things, sometimes annoying and sometimes rather cheeky and obscene. Perhaps just to attract my attention and to play with me. I would just play along and chase him across my 2-house home until he just gave up,... or I gave up, panting and out of breath...