Fight Flu With Black Elderberry

When my husband recently returned from a business trip overseas he called me before coming home from the airport to warn me that he had became very ill while flying. It sounded like he was bringing a dreadful form of the flu home to me and our two little ones. Well prepared for such a situation, I immediately reached for vitamin C and D, my favorite herbal immune tonic, and for a bottle of Sambucus --a syrup containing black elderberry extract.

For those who choose not to be vaccinated against the flu of any strain, the black elderberry is really the best natural weapon to fight influenza. A double blind study conducted during a flu outbreak in Panama found that the standardized elderberry extract stopped the replication of at least 10 different human influenza A/B viruses. More than 90% of the patients treated with elderberry made a significant improvement in two days and 90% were completely cured in three days.

Black elderberry is safe for children and since it has a sweet berry flavor, mine didn't mind drinking it. They didn't catch whatever bug my husband brought home from his trip and neither did I. And just like the patients in the Panama study, my husband also made a rapid recovery within a couple of days.