December 18, 2023 7:24 am
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Published by Jo Dunbar
On the 30th of November this year, the NHS website reported that the “number of patients in hospital with norovirus last week was almost triple the number during the same period last winter, new NHS figures show today. An average of 351 people were in hospital with diarrhoea and vomiting symptoms every day last week compared to 126 in the same week last year.”
This virus is highly infectious, and remarkably resilient. In fact, freezing contaminated food only preserves the virus until it finds a new host. With an incubation time of 15 – 48 hours, once it invades your cells it is wildly prolific. The National Geographic notes that each gramme of faeces, violently exploding from your body, contains 5 billion noroviruses, all looking for a new host. They survive on surfaces for days following their contact. What can we do to save ourselves from hours miserably looking down in the loo?
Probiotics attach themselves to the gastric cells, that way displacing the viruses. They also attach themselves to the virus – in effect, chaperoning them out of the body. There are many types of friendly bacteria, and I would suggest taking as broad spectrum a probiotic as possible.
There are several professional herbal remedies that can help significantly with the norovirus attack (call me if you think you need stronger herbs than below), but also some kitchen herbs. Ginger, clove, lemongrass, turmeric have all been shown to be effective, as well as green tea, cranberry and pomegranate juices(1,2).
Try this home herbal remedy:
an inch of fresh ginger, grated
an inch of Lemon grass finely sliced
1 clove
½ cup of boiling water
Add all ingredients to a mug and cover with a saucer for 10 minutes. Strain, then add ½ cup of unsweetened pomegranate juice, and sip.
(1)^ Aboubakr HA, Nauertz A, Luong NT, Agrawal S, El-Sohaimy SA, Youssef MM, Goyal SM. In Vitro Antiviral Activity of Clove and Ginger Aqueous Extracts against Feline Calicivirus, a Surrogate for Human Norovirus. J Food Prot. 2016 Jun;79(6):1001-12. doi: 10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-15-593. PMID: 27296605.
(2)^ Sarowska J, Wojnicz D, Jama-Kmiecik A, Frej-Mądrzak M, Choroszy-Król I. Antiviral Potential of Plants against Noroviruses. Molecules. 2021 Aug 2;26(15):4669. doi: 10.3390/molecules26154669. PMID: 34361822; PMCID: PMC8347075.
