AVIAN FLU:

With avian flu claiming its first lives in Turkey , it's time to start thinking of ways of building your immune system. But how best to do it? One possible approach is by taking daily high doses of beta glucans, or brewer's yeast, according to the Institute for Complementary Medicine.
Their correspondent, Dr Paul Clayton, of the Universities of Westminster and Amsterdam , is already stock-piling supplies of purified beta glucans. "When the time comes I will give them to my children, at a dose of 500 mg of beta glucans per day, armed with the knowledge that in trials with pigs, beta glucans reduce the harm done to the lungs after infection with swine flu virus and reduced replication of the virus itself," he says.
While animal studies are, at best, dubious, Clayton thinks there are enough metabolic and physiological similarities between humans and pigs to make the results valid.
It's a view with which the US Army would agree. They carried out their own tests on more than a hundred immuno-stimulants, and concluded that beta glucans were the most effective of them all. Not only did they protect against infection from bacteria, viruses and fungi, they also protected against radiation injuries.
However, not all share Dr Clayton's faith in brewer's yeast. Several nutritional experts argue that the more potent form of live yeast is found in a food supplement called Saccharomyces boulardii, which is usually given to treat diarrhea and 'holiday tummy'. Claims that brewer's yeast on its own would kick-start the immune system are wide of the mark, they say.