Food Poisoning is No Joke!

The ordeal began some three hours after breakfast yesterday with a steady, building nausea and a feeling that nothing good was forthcoming. Even as I looked at the pizza, beer and hot wings I’d just purchased for the afternoon’s Pro Bowl game, I realized that consuming any of it might be wishful thinking. By 2 p.m. it turned out to be so as the non-stop vomiting began. Everything I’d eaten for the past 12 hours resurrected itself in a hurling mess and went on for another eight hours.

I couldn’t hold down any liquids, though I understood the biggest threat from any food poisoning is dehydration. But each drink – even a small one – whether of Gatorade (to replace electrolytes), or plain water or Camomille tea, met the same outcome: splattered into the toilet bowl.

By 10:30 when I turned in I was desperate as I didn’t want to be up all night losing even more fluids. For some reason I reached for an Echinacea-based (sugar free) cough lozenge to get rid of the taste of residual vomit if nothing else. I slowly sucked on it and found the nausea gradually abated and by 2 a.m.had nearly disappeared. For good measure I took another lozenge around 4.30 a.m. and was able to wake up and take liquids (mainly chicken broth) with no problem. Did the Echinacea lozenge really work? A glance at the University of Maryland Alternative Medicine website brought up this information:

“Results of archeological digs indicate that Native Americans may have used echinacea for more than 400 years to treat infections and wounds and as a general "cure-all." Throughout history people have used echinacea to treat scarlet fever, syphilis, malaria, blood poisoning, and diphtheria. Although this herb was popular during the 18th and 19th centuries, its use began to decline in the United States after the introduction of antibiotics. Echinacea preparations became increasingly popular in Germany throughout the 20th century. In fact, most of the scientific research on echinacea has been conducted in Germany.

Today, people use echinacea to shorten the duration of the common cold and flu and reduce symptoms, such as sore throat (pharyngitis), cough, and fever. Many herbalists also recommend echinacea to help boost the immune system and help the body fight infections.”


This made sense and pretty well convinced me that taking the echinacea lozenges actually had worked and the vomiting bout had not merely run its course .

Since severe food poisoning generally runs at least 24 hours (often three days), and my overt symptoms (vomiting, diarrhea) stopped after barely 10 hrs. though residual effects continued another day. I concluded there was a causal connection and rather more preferable than taking two tablespoons of vinegar and a teaspoon of crushed garlic – which I don’t think my stomach would have appreciated!

In the meantime, the lesson learned is to toss out anything in the fridge not used in within 1 week (in this case it was a brine-based, not mayo –based, German potato salad that I'd eaten the night before).

“Waste not, want not” – maybe, but much better: “Waste – rather than get wasted by eating it”