1. Step 1

   So, it's flu season again, and you have started feeling the dreaded symptoms. You feel run down, have a headache, feel nauseous, and your coughing. You know by experience, and by the fever you have, that you are coming down with the flu. You want to try a natural way to get rid of the flu this year, but your not quite sure what to take.

2. Step 2

   You need to make sure that you have some organic apple cider vinegar with the mother in it. You can purchase this at your local health food store, or you can buy it online.I have found that buying online is usually less expensive, so shop around if your looking for the best price. You best bet is to make sure you have the apple cider vinegar on hand, just in case.

3. Step 3

   You need to add 1-2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, to some juice or water, if you add it to water, you may find it easier to get it down with honey in it. The apple cider vinegar has a bad taste, but it does work, so don't give up.

4. Step 4

   Take the apple cider vinegar every 4 hours, you will start seeing a drastic difference. You can use a apple cider vinegar and warm water mix, and gargle with it, this can help get rid of any coughing that you have. Just remember that even though the apple cider vinegar has a bad taste, just hang in there, you will see a difference.

It has thousands of devotees but can cider vinegar really cure this condition? Matilda McLean investigates

Last month, Sarah Gall, a church organist from Rochdale, Lancashire wrote to The Daily Telegraph describing how she believed she had been cured of arthritis in her spine by following a diet that included apple cider vinegar and honey.

The Letters page was inundated with dozens of emails, letters and phone calls from readers requesting more information about Gall's regime - which had been first devised by a nurse called Margaret Hills in 1961.

In fact, Hills's use of cider vinegar follows in a long tradition: people have been using natural cider vinegar as a medicine for centuries.

As far back as 3,000 BC, Egyptians were using it for health benefits including weight loss and Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, was said to have used cider vinegar for its healing qualities. While doctors remain sceptical, many sufferers have embraced it, including the explorer and adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

And with increasing pressure on the Health Service to fund drugs - last week it was revealed that thousands of severe rheumatoid arthritis sufferers (a type of arthritis in which the immune system starts attacking the joints) may be denied the drug Orencia after the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said it should not be available on the NHS due to its annual cost of £10,000 per patient a year - people are increasingly looking to alternative therapies to control their condition.

For 54-year-old Gall, osteoarthritis (where joints are damaged through age, wear and tear or injury) meant she was bedridden, in constant pain, unable to sleep and understandably depressed by her condition. A bad reaction to prescribed anti-inflammatory tablets meant that she could not take any drugs to ease it.

"I was emotionally and physically drained, I was crying all the time and the pain was totally crippling - it was like someone was drilling through the base of my spine," she said.

Desperate to help, Gall's daughter found a book - Treating Arthritis the Drug-Free Way by Margaret Hills - on eBay.

Hills had developed rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 21, during her first year of nursing training in 1947. She recovered after resting for eight months but then, as she grew older, she developed osteoarthritis before once again succumbing to rheumatoid arthritis.

Feeling that conventional medicine had done little to help, she turned to natural remedies in the early 1960s. After her children grew up, she opened the Margaret Hills Clinic in Warwickshire in 1982, where her daughter, Christine Horner, now continues her work.

Arthritis, which affects nine million people in Britain, is an inflammation of the joints and its causes are not clear.

Hills believed arthritis is caused by the body building up acid, which crystallises and lodges between the joints. The acid crystals become surrounded by fluids, causing swelling, soreness and stiffness. So Hills concluded that the condition would be alleviated by cutting down on acid entering the body.

"By controlling the amount of acid going in through diet we aim to increase the alkaline resources in the body that cause the crystals to break down," says Horner.

"The overall effect of apple cider vinegar and honey is alkalising and helps to create the right environment in the stomach to start off the digestive process."

Gall decided to follow the regime strictly - it meant avoiding alcohol, cutting out foods with refined sugar and any citric fruit, as well as taking cider vinegar, mixed with honey, hot water and molasses, after every meal. This was combined with vitamin supplements - including A, B, magnesium and calcium - and a hot bath in Epsom salts.

After a week, Gall began to feel much better and, after a couple of months, she is "pain-free and totally mobile" and can continue to play the church organ. She takes daily exercise but says that the arthritis creeps back as soon as she stops the regime.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes first tried cider vinegar and honey after developing bad arthritis in his hands and his hip 23 years ago.

He did so after seeing the transformation in his mother, Lady Audrey Fiennes, who suffered from arthritis in the lower back. She had turned to the natural remedy when she was 86 and was bed-ridden due to her condition; the family had even contemplated moving her into a care home.

"After six months my mother's arthritis started getting better," says Fiennes.

"She got over the problem completely and was able to stay in her house. She died aged 92 but she got an extra six years."

So, when he found himself developing arthritis, he followed her example. After trying several kinds of cider vinegar, he found that by taking Honeygar - a brand sold in health food shops - his arthritis eased.

Fiennes was the first man to completely cross the Antarctic by foot; he has run seven marathons in seven days on seven continents and was the first to visit both the North and South Poles.

He feels that the natural remedy has helped him to carry on his adventurous lifestyle.

"Without it I wouldn't be able to have done all the things I have done, as the running and the damp would induce arthritis," he says.

"It has completely kept my arthritis at bay."

Despite these individual success stories, doctors doubt the effectiveness of such a diet.

"Unlike some alternative medicine, cider vinegar is harmless," says Dr Michael Ehrenstein, consultant rheumatologist at University College Hospital.

"However, there have been no scientific trials which prove that cider vinegar works at all."

And as the causes of arthritis are not clear, Dr Ehrenstein says he is "very sceptical" that a combination of diet, cider vinegar and Epsom salt baths would help.

"The only food that has been linked to rheumatoid arthritis is red meat - and you have to eat a lot of red meat - but we do not as yet understand why red meat causes arthritis," he added.

A spokeswoman for Arthritis Care said cider vinegar is an old traditional treatment but was unaware of any independent evidence.

"Before taking any purported remedy, it is important to discuss with your GP any side-effects or possibly harmful interaction with prescription medicine," she said.

However, Christine Horner believes that thousands of arthritis sufferers have been helped through a combination of the acid-free diet:

"Don't expect results overnight - some people take months to respond, others take years - but we firmly believe that this combination is the key to getting rid of arthritic disease," she says.