Avoiding or Getting Over Illnesses

Many people get many illnesses this time of year. Some have requested that I tell you possible things to do about it. So, here you are:

Most of the things on this list are usually indicated to cut off the beginnings of a cold; to shorten the duration. And while that is the best method, for those of you who are already sick, don't worry, you can still do them and they will still help. This is because the things listed below will not treat symptoms, or even directly attack the bug, but rather will strengthen your immune system so that you can do it yourself, more effectively.

Also, if you are currently on any prescribed medication, either for this cold/infection, or for anything else, please continue to take it. The alternative remedies I will list are like backdoors to the illness. While we use them, we still want all the help we can get from the front lines.

This first group is a list of the essentials. Very powerful and necessary things to stay healthy. The second list is optionals, extra things you can do if you’d really like to prevent or eliminate your illness.

GROUP ONE: ESSENTIALS

Goldenseal: The tincture form works best, capsules are also available. This is by far the best for infections. I've made my own sinusitis go away with this. Please not that as with anything you'll take, it takes a while to clear up all the congestion, but at least it gets better. The goldenseal is nature's antibiotic, it kills anything. It's amazing.

Sambucol (name brand), black elderberry syrup: Also amazing. This is essentially juice of a certain berry. This juice alone can cure colds! I've staved off three colds this month just by drinking this stuff. It cures sore throats, has lots of vitamin C, and most importantly, is specifically good at treating respiratory illnesses.

Traditional Medicinals herbal teas (name brand): This company has three or four teas you'll be interested in. 1) Echinacea Elder has elderberry in it and is for colds that include respiratory problems. 2) Echinacea Plus is three kinds of echinacea, and is also good. 3) Throat Coat may not help you heal, but will definitely help a sore and dry throat. 4) Breathe Easy is just for respiratory ailments. The box says it's only for upper respiratory, which means your nose, but when my husband gets sick and has a tight chest, he says it does wonders for him. I like to combine three teas in 2 cups of hot water. Let it cool before drinking, or add ice after ten minutes of steeping. Sweeten with honey to further help a sore throat and to provide a little more anti-inflammatory properties. Take this tea 2 to 4 times a day.

Zinc: Zinc is very strong and very useful in helping your body become resistant to illnesses. Zinc lozenges with vitamin C and echinacea are available in a great cherry flavor. Take several of these a day. Zinc is better absorbed into the body through the inside of the mouth straight to the blood system than into the stomach where the liver can cancel it out.

Zicam: The best form of zinc, and a great way to boost the immune system in addition to goldenseal and sambucol is zicam. Zicam (name brand) makes a nasal gel that is absorbed into the inner lining of the nose. No, this doesn't hurt or sting like I thought it would. I have the spray. You just spray it, wait one minute, then blow your nose. No big deal, but do that one to three times a day and you'll suddenly fight off diseases everyone else is getting. They also have a losenge type, and a throat spray, but those two formats of delivery are not only not as effective, but also they didn't put all the medicine in those two formulas. Stick with the two nasal deliveries.

Note: Zicam (name brand) also sells cold medicine, which is like normal medicine in that it treats the symptoms of the cold. You'll need to know the difference between the cold medicine (day and night versions) and the immune system booster. Another note: once you do get sick, taking decongestants is not usually the best way to go, because it causes the congestion to stay in you which is how it gets infected leading to sinusitis and pneumonia. However, the Zicam Cold & Flu Daytime spoon dose medicine (liquid medicine in plastic spoons for mixing in drinks, though I like to just lick it off the spoon) actually helps me feel really healthy and I appear to heal faster. If you need Nyquil or Tylenol cold or something, I recommend this brand and product as a replacement.

Vitamins: In addition to the mineral zinc, you should also make sure you take lots of Vitamin C and Vitamin E. These three vitamins and mineral are essential in the plan to make or keep you healthy. I recommend 400-800 i.u. of Vitamin E per day, mixed tocopherols is best, and 1,000 to 2,000 mg of Vitamin C per day. One great form of Vitamin C are packets to make flavored fizzy drinks called Emergen-C (name brand). Each packet has 1,000 mg of Vitamin C as well as some other vitamins that help you absorb it. The liquid delivery also helps you absorb it faster and more effectively. Pour one packet into about 4 ounces of water or juice. If you have citrus flavored packet (I like tangerine), I recommend using only citrus juice or water, to make it taste right. You’ll actually feel better after drinking this! Have two a day, or three a day for a few days just to kick start your system. Note: taking megadoses of Vitamin C, such as 3,000 mg, is okay for a little while, but be careful to make sure that you ease off of it slowly. If you jump from 3,000 one day to 1,000, your body will think it has none and will begin to show signs of scurvy such as bad gums. Don’t be scared, it’s no big deal and totally fixable. If you notice this, just increase the Vitamin C level and then bring it down more slowly over the next few days.

Steam Bath: This the last thing I’ll list here on the essentials list, before I move on to the optionals list. Steam baths, to induce sweating, is something I discovered this summer. I’ll tell you how to do it below. I wanted to know more about how sweating helped people be healthy, and why we get fevers. My research showed me that sweating is an amazing way to get toxins out of the body. The only other way is through the waste system, which is much more complicated, and, if you’re sick, it’s already compromised and weak. The sweat ducts in the skin are a straight pathway out of the body. This is an amazing trick, and I do it now even when I’m healthy because it makes me feel so much better. It’s not hard to do. I recommend this for anyone who is even a little sick and who owns a bathroom. If you have any built up congestion, whether in your nose, sinuses, lungs, or all three, this will do a fascinating trick that nothing else has been able to do – it will invite that congestion to come out of you at a highly accelerated rate. The stuff just begs to come out! Steam baths are also artificial fevers, which help do what a normal fever does, which is to raise your body temperature to a degree which the viruses and bacteria can’t survive anymore.

How to have a steam bath: A steam bath is like a dry sauna, only it’s a wet sauna. It’s a lot more comfortable and pleasurable to be in, the heat feels good instead of piercing, and you sweat at a much lower temperature – like 112 degrees lower. Since most of us don’t have access to a gym sauna, here’s how you can do it in your home…. Go to your smallest bathroom in your home (or the only bathroom in your home) and turn on the shower to the hottest possible setting. Some of you may need to raise your water heater setting in the winter to achieve the proper level; just remember to lower it again after your steam bath. Don’t eat right before this, wait until about 1.5 to 2 hours after you’ve eaten anything heavy. Light snacks don’t matter. Keep the venting system in the bathroom off, place a towel on the floor by the door to prevent heat and steam loss under the door. I like to set it up for about 5 minutes before I enter, to let it warm up a bit, but that’s optional. Go into the bathroom with a room temperature bottle of water, towels, a waterproof watch (that you are not wearing), and no clothes or jewelry. You may also want to bring a thermometer (aiming for about 96 degrees), hygrometer (really optional, and aiming for 100% humidity), reading material that can get fairly wet (in case you get bored), a body scrubbing brush, and soap. Oh, and candles if you want, too, again, really optional, eucalyptus candles or aromatherapy would also be really useful here. You’ll get your own ritual after a while. Empty the room of things you don’t want to get wet, such as magazines. Toilet paper seems to survive just fine in my bathroom. Get comfortable wherever you want in the room. You may want to start by sitting on a towel on the toilet or tub rim. After about ten minutes, I like to get hotter, so I sit on the rim of the tub, but with the shower curtain closed. It’s the most steam I’ve figured out how to be in. Be careful not to touch the water, angle the shower head up and into the wall corner so that you get more steam, but less chance of scalding. Don’t, by the way, don’t try this with children or if you are pregnant. If the water is not really hot to the touch, if you can comfortably leave your hand in it, then it’s not hot enough. At some point, if you want to be really gung-ho about this, scrub your body with a bath body brush, then soap up, then turn the water temperature down for a minute to rinse off. Then turn the water back up. The scrubbing and cleaning will help open and unclog your pores all over your body to allow the toxins to flow out of you unhindered. The steam bath should be 20 minutes at minimum, and 45 minutes to an hour if you’re really enjoying yourself. When you feel done, get out. If you get lightheaded at any time, you’re done. You can always go cool off and then come back, but be careful about being lightheaded. The steam and heat messes with your blood pressure so you may get dizzy if you stand up too quickly. Just be slow and careful and you’ll have a great time. If you’re congested at all, and sometimes even if you didn’t know you were congested, you’ll feel like you have a need to blow your nose, or clear your throat, or cough up something. Please, take EVERY opportunity to do this. Do this often while you’re in there. This is the whole point. You can do a week’s worth of draining with one hour in the steam. One last detail, you have to drink a lot of water. I go through 16 ounces of water for every 25 minutes I’m in steam. Sometimes, I need carbohydrates and salt afterwards as well, to replace the lost water and salt from sweating. Be sure to replenish yourself. Salty crackers and water are good, or Gatorade is good too, as long as you drink water as well, at least 50/50, and not just Gatorade. After the sweating, towel off, and go lie down on your bed for about 15 minutes, or until you are comfortable and cool. You will continue to sweat and blow your nose a lot during this time, this is very good. If you just take a cold shower at the end of your sweat, you’ll waste another good 20 minutes of sweating time during the cool off. So, go have a nice rest while you cool off. After the cool off time, go take a normal shower and be sure to clean your skin well, especially under the arms and the crotch area, which is where you did most of the good sweating. You may be tired for the next hour or two, but just be sure to eat and drink enough and soon you’ll notice how much cleaner your insides feel and how much clearer your breathing is.

GROUP TWO: OPTIONALS

DanActive Immunity (name brand): Dannon yogurt makes a yogurt with this name. It is a wonderful probiotic, I recommend you take one of these a day, even when you’re healthy. Probiotics add good bacteria to your digestive tract, most all diseases can be eradicated if you provide enough good bacteria to wipe them out. They sell them in week packs, for convenience. Vanilla is my favorite, but it comes in other flavors as well. It’s a drinkable yogurt, with the consistency of milk. Very yummy. Very good.

Warm bath with Epsom Salts: Another good way to artificially create a fever is to take a warm bath, as warm as you can stand it. This won’t clear your sinuses like a steam bath, and won’t create as much sweating either, but sometimes a mild fever is just what you need. Add Epsom salts and a little sea salt to help balance your body and relax sore muscles. I’m not sure why, but Epsom salts are good medicine. Somehow they affect tissues in your body for the better. They also help alkalize your body. An acid body is a playground for diseases, but an alkaline, or basic, body is strong and protected from them.

Colloidal Silver: This is a small tincture bottle of brown liquid. Electrically, they can get elemental silver into water, for easier absorption into your body. Take a few dropperfuls in your mouth a few times a day. Silver is a great anti-microbial and kills almost anything. It’s so effective, in fact, that you’ll need to be sure to drink enough water with it, and to supplement with yogurt or acidolphius to replace the good bacteria in your system.

Neti Pot (name brand): This is a small pot that’s shaped rather like Aladdin’s lamp. It is filled with warm water and just the right amount of sea salt, and some goldenseal (optional, for infections) and is used to clean out your sinuses. How?, you ask? Well, you may not want to know. :-) You pour the mix into one nostril, it goes into your sinuses in your head, and comes out the other nostril, bringing the mucus out with it. See, I told you you didn’t want to know. This works really well, though, and sometimes, it’s the only option left for a really bad case of congestion. I used to use this a lot. However, I thought I’d let you know, ever since I’ve been taking steam baths, I have never needed to use the neti pot. The steam cleans out my congestion long before it gets bad.

Green Magma (name brand) and soup: I mentioned alkalizing the body before. I’d like to give you a few more ways to do that. First of all, when you’re sick, or about to get sick, stop having desserts. Sugar is very good at weakening your immune system when you need it most. Create the opposite effect that sugar produces by eating the opposite of sugar: salt and vegetables. Chicken broth / chicken noodle soup, and miso soup for the vegetarians are both excellent at neutralizing the acid in your blood and bringing the pH back up to a good level. They both are warm, liquid, and salty, three things you need right now. Another thing I love is Green Magma, which is a pulverized powdered form of barley grass. Put two teaspoons in a glass of apple juice, once or twice a day. Even when you’re healthy this stuff will make you feel energized, balanced, and just downright better.

Aromatherapy: Some essential oils are very useful in clearing congestion and helping to overcome illnesses. Eucalyptus oil is by far the best for your nose. It smells like camphor, only better. I like to use both eucalyptus and lavender essential oils together. Not only do they smell great, but lavender is an amazing antibiotic. You can even put a drop of it in your tea, or a few drops of it in a mix with half an ounce of olive or grapeseed oil in a dropper to be used to fight ear infections. Or rub both oils onto your chest for a Mentholatum effect. But, aside from the ear dropper thing, if it’s for your nose, then getting it in the air is the best thing. Place olive oil in an aromatherapy burner with a tea lite candle underneath. Add about 5-10 drops of each oil. Less is needed with better quality essential oils. After a few minutes the smell and will enter the room. This is a great thing to do in the room your going to sleep in later that night.

Massage: Massage therapy is another wonderful option that I highly recommend, though I know not everyone will be familiar with it. Massage therapy isn’t just for enjoyment. Trust me, with my messed up leg, I’ve had some pretty painful massages. :-) But massage therapy is a amazing at keeping the fluids moving in your body. When an illness comes, it’s usually because there was an imbalance somewhere in your body. Massage can eliminate the tense areas in which muscle tissue may be holding onto a toxic build up of lactic acid, and it can also redistribute the pressure build up in your head, temples, cheekbones, face, and upper neck when you have clogged sinuses. Even have them loosen the fascia on your head if you’d like. (Yes, I’ve needed this before.) It may seem unrelated to your illness, but it’s really not. A 30-minute massage can really change your life. Before the massage, be sure to drink enough water. After the massage, you may need to ice things down. After the icing, take a warm bath or a steam bath to let all the toxins the therapist loosened have a chance to leave your body. If you don’t do this, you’ll find yourself quite sore and quite sick the next day because all those toxins and lactic acid just settled down in you again. It’s kind of like spitting after brushing your teeth. All the brushing in the world won’t do much good if you don’t spit (in this case: sweat) and rinse your mouth out with water (in this case: drink water).

Ok, I’m done. I didn’t mean to go on so long. I guess this article was a long time coming, and I had a lot of things I wanted to tell you. I want to give you all the information and power you need to take good care of yourself in regards to colds, flu, and infections. If you have any questions, please, of course, feel free to ask. I’ve been living with these remedies for seven years now. Everyone’s body is different, but the basics are similar enough that many of the things listed here should work on you.

I should note, I am not a doctor, I’m just very good at learning and remembering. None of this article can or should be taken as proper medical advice. If you want to go see a doctor, please do that. Doctors are very useful sometimes. However, there may be times when you want more, you want to help to boost your own immune system, you want to stop a cold before it starts, you want a backdoor. I hope these things will help. :-)