Acute Illness: Supporting Your Body’s Natural Healing

What if everything you have been taught about acute illness is wrong?

For example, can you catch a cold?

I just finished an insightful book titled Can You Catch a Cold? by Daniel Roytas that reaffirmed my belief about acute illness.

Acute illness is an intelligent response by the body to increase metabolism and throw off toxins. It’s not just a matter of germs being randomly passed on when a stranger happens to sneeze on you.

Let’s explore a familiar story I’ve heard countless times in recent weeks from my relatives and patients to see if it rings true…

Imagine you’re like most people who didn’t follow our advice from the last newsletter.

Without proper preparation, your stress levels skyrocketed during the month before the holidays. Your sleep schedule dramatically changed—instead of rising with the sun at 6:45 AM, you began sleeping in until 8:30 AM, throwing your circadian rhythm completely off balance.

Then, you overindulged in multiple servings of Aunt Mary’s pie, and what started as “just one night” of drinking stretched into several days of finishing an entire bottle of wine or more.

And then when the temperature plunged into the mid-teens, instead of taking those morning walks, you sat sipping coffee while staring at the frigid outdoors, promising yourself “I’ll get my steps in tomorrow.” This lack of activity reduced your vitamin D exposure and kept you trapped indoors for weeks, breathing stagnant air.

When the New Year arrived, all your postponed work came crashing down. Rather than allowing your body time to detoxify, rest, and recover, you pushed even harder.

Now it’s mid-January, and it starts with a sniffle. That sniffle evolves into a small cough. Before you know it, the cough settles in your lungs, and you’re bedridden for 7 days with fever, coughing, snotty nose and the chills.

Does this sound familiar?

As a society, we’re confused about the true causes of acute illness. Instead of taking responsibility for the lifestyle choices and behaviors that create an environment for sickness, we simply blame bacteria and viruses as the “culprits”—a typical Western approach.

So, what exactly is acute illness?

An acute illness is your body’s natural attempt to recover and heal from previous stresses. When we allow this healing process to unfold naturally—rather than suppressing it—it can lead to increased vitality and improved health.

Your body employs powerful healing tools like fever, rest, sweating, and changes in appetite to detox and restore balance.

Here’s the crucial part: suppressing these natural processes with quick fixes doesn’t solve the underlying problem—it merely forces toxins deeper into your system, creating long-term consequences. Any immune suppressants, including over-the-counter medications, drive these toxins deeper.

Let your body do what it does best…heal itself!

This illustration from our mentor, Dr. Zeff, explains acute illness effectively. The body attempts to return to normal through a reaction and discharge process. We MUST allow this natural process to occur for a return to normal health.

Want to dive deeper? Check out this insightful article by Dr. Zeff to learn more about the healing process:

Nature Cure: The Process of Healing

When experiencing an acute illness, there are specific steps we can take to ease discomfort while supporting the natural healing process.

These steps reduce the inconvenience without suppressing the healing—a win-win in our book.

Let’s explore these healing methods together.

Step 1: Fast

When a dog gets sick and you put raw meat in their bowl, what happens? They refuse to eat it!

This natural instinct shows us what to do when we’re ill.

Most people’s first reaction to feeling unwell is reaching for comfort food. However, digestion consumes up to 70% of your body’s energy, and your digestive tract contains over 80% of your immune system. During illness, this energy is better directed toward healing rather than digesting food.

Listen to your body—fast for as long as you comfortably can. If you do get hungry, stick to broths and light soups. There’s wisdom in Grandma’s classic chicken noodle soup.

Step 2: Let the Fever Ride

“Give me a chance to create fever and I will cure any disease,” said the great physician, Parmenides, 2,000 years ago.

Fever is one of the body’s most powerful defensive and healing mechanisms, designed specifically to restore health. The elevated temperature accelerates metabolism, stops viruses and bacteria from multiplying, and helps eliminate excess microorganisms from the body.

Fever serves as an effective, protective, and healing response—not just for common colds and minor infections, but also for serious conditions like polio and cancer. Medical facilities now use therapeutic heat treatments and controlled fever induction to treat various conditions, including acute infections, arthritis, rheumatic diseases, skin disorders, insomnia, and muscular pain.

Trust your body’s natural process unless the fever remains above 105°F for an extended period. In such cases, a Spanish Mantle can provide relief.

Whatever you do, don’t suppress a fever—especially in children.

If you remember just one thing from this newsletter, let it be this: never suppress a fever unless it’s truly life-threatening.

Step 3: Warming Socks

It sounds unusual, but “magic socks” are a powerful healing tool. This simple hydrotherapy technique boosts circulation and reduces congestion while you sleep.

Step 4: Support The Detox

When your body is fighting an infection, it’s important to support its natural detoxification processes. Support whichever channels your body is using to eliminate toxins.

• Sinus relief: neti pot
• Sinus relief and lung congestion: steam inhalation with essential oils such as eucalyptus
• Digestive tract: coffee enema
• Overall detoxification: dry sauna

We want to use therapies and routines that support these natural cleansing processes, not suppress them. For example, if you have diarrhea—which is your body’s way of quickly eliminating toxins from your digestive tract and internal organs—DO NOT take anti-diarrheal medication.

While this might seem obvious, many of us don’t think this way.

Step 5: Homeopathy + Supplements

Sometimes, you need an extra boost. This is where homeopathy and supplements can be beneficial, as they can effectively support the healing process.

• Oscillococcinum is a household favorite, but for a more personalized approach, consider getting a homeopathy kit (see below) 
• Dana Ullman’s book provides an excellent foundation for understanding homeopathy effectively for parents. For proactive parents, we recommend investing in this book and acute homeopathy kit. Homeopathy can be a powerful tool for treating your, your children’s, or even your pet’s acute ailments. Another must have acute homeopathy book is The Homeopathic Emergency Guide 
• Cod Liver Oil is especially beneficial because of its high vitamin A and D content, which helps strengthen the immune system.

We offer additional protocols through our online dispensary FullScript that you can keep at home for when you feel an acute infection coming on. I always have these products on hand just in case. It is worth the minimal financial investment.

While we typically avoid general recommendations since each person’s needs are unique, here are some basic principles to get you started.

GENERAL RULES

Dry cold: Take Iodine and Vitamin A

Products we recommend: Iodozyme, Bio AE Mulsion Forte from , or Cataplex A from Standard Process

Wet cold: Take Vitamin C, calcium, and bile

Products we recommend: Buffered Vitamin C by Thorne and Ca-Zyme from Biotics Research

At the first sign of a cold, take high doses of Mixed Ascorbates with Ca-Zyme. When taken promptly, this combination can reduce or completely resolve symptom severity within hours.

For all colds, take 2-3 times the normal dose of Thymex (Standard Process) during the first 3-5 days to boost your thymus, the master immune gland. It’s also crucial to increase immune-supporting minerals, especially zinc and selenium. We recommend a combination product called Zinc plus selenium by Dr Mercola.

Important note: Unusual symptoms like post-nasal drip, bad breath, and body aches are often caused by an open ileocecal valve (ICV). This allows toxic contents from the cecum to flow back into the small intestine, where they’re absorbed and expelled through the lungs and sinuses’ rich vascular tissue creating these unusual symptoms. Correcting the ICV often resolves these seemingly unrelated cold symptoms that can sometime persist for weeks, months or even years.