Top 10 Home Remedies for Cold and Flu Season
ENTER TO WIN! Learn to cook healthier meals for your family! Click here to enter to win Real Food for Rookies, a new online class -- retail value $120, plus over $60 worth of discount coupons. Don't miss out! contest ends this SATURDAY Sept 4th at midnight Pacific.
It’s cold and flu season. If you feel something coming on, it’s best not to run out and buy something that will suppress the symptoms. Getting sick is the body’s way of “housecleaning”. In other words, your body is attempting to rid itself of the accumulated toxins.
What you want to do is support the detoxification pathways. The body detoxifies via urine, feces, perspiration, mucus, and vomit. This is why, when we ingest something toxic, we throw up or have diarrhea — or start producing a lot of mucus. The body is trying to get rid of the toxins.
If you take a pill to clear your sinuses, the body cannot detoxify.
Think about it. If you take a pill to clear your sinuses, the body cannot detoxify. So you may feel better temporarily, but the body is being thwarted from its natural need to detoxify.
And where do those toxins go? They go underground. The body has no choice but to store the toxins. By taking these drugs (prescription or over-the counter), you are actually increasing your chances of degenerative diseases like cancer.
The other thing you do not want to do, if you can avoid it, is take an antibiotic. Antibiotics may kill the bad bugs, but they kill the good bugs, too. You need those good bugs to help you recover.
So when you catch a cold or flu, the most important thing you can do is assist the body in detoxification.
To learn more about illness as a housecleaning, read this article by Dr. Philip Incao, M.D.: Understanding Infection: Not a Battle But a Housecleaning
Here are my top 10 home remedies for a cold or flu:
1. Rest and sleep as much as possible. When the body is trying to detoxify, it needs to direct all its energy toward that aim. Do not go to the gym or do housework. Lie down. Rest. Nap. Go to bed early.
2. Homemade chicken stock. A minimum of 3 cups per day. You can also drink beef stock or fish stock. There’s a reason they call this “Jewish penicillin”. Read more about the healing properties of bone broth: Broth is Beautiful.
3. Lots of fluids. Filtered water, bone broth, raw milk, and kefir are good choices. Fluids will help you pass the toxins via urine and sweating. The antioxidants in freshly squeezed fruit and vegetable juice also help the body detoxify. You can also drink lots of hot herbal tea. Add a little freshly grated ginger and raw honey — these will also help to support the body’s immune response. Coconut oil is also great to add to tea — it’s antifungal and antibacterial. Avoid caffeine (not good for your adrenal glands), storebought juice and soda pop (too high in sugar).
4. Hot epsom salt baths. If you don’t have epsom salts, you can use fresh squeezed lemon or bentonite clay. The hotter the better. The heat helps you sweat, which is a detoxification pathway. and the salt/lemon/clay will help draw out the toxins. You can also do clay baths. After your bath, crawl into bed and get under the covers so you continue to sweat.
5. Steam baths. If you don’t have a bathtub or can’t do baths for some reason, boil some water and then sit over the pot with a towel draped over your head. Do this for as long as you can stand it. It will help you sweat and move the toxins out. When you finish, lie down under the covers with the towel still wrapped on your head so you continue to sweat. The longer you sweat, the better. I like to do this just before bed.
6. Use a neti pot. The neti pot facilitates nasal irrigation. In other words, it cleans out your sinuses and helps you get unstuffed (this also helps move those toxins out). Just fill with filtered water and a pinch of sea salt.
7. Eat fresh garlic and onions. Add these to your chicken soup. They really support the immune system, as so does fresh parsley and cilantro.
8. Avoid sugar and flour. These foods depress the immune system and tax your body’s resources. So steer clear of pasta and sweets and stick to homemade soup, eggs, meats, and produce.
9. Consume raw egg yolks from pastured chickens. Raw egg yolks are immune-enhancing. Throw them in a smoothie with kefir, raw milk, or coconut milk. Or put them in your chicken soup. Don’t do this with battery eggs from a factory farm — they are likely to harbor salmonella. Use real farm-fresh eggs from a trusted source (i.e., a local farmer).
10. Cod liver oil. A super food for the immune system. Double up on your normal dose.
It’s also really important to take a strong probiotic and/or consume plenty of fermented foods and beverages like kefir, yogurt, kombucha, raw milk, fermented salsa, and sauerkraut. The more good bugs you have working for you, the better!
If you really must take something to help you with symptoms of a cold, I recommend taking something homeopathic. Homeopathic remedies work with the body instead of suppressing symptoms. For a sore throat and cough, I really love Chestal homeopathic cough syrup. It really works!
NEVER MISS A POST! Sign Up for FREE Email Updates:
You can also Subscribe in a Reader
05/12/2008 at 2:20 pm Permalink
Another thing you can add to the bath as an alternative to what you’ve already mentioned, is baking soda, or apple cider vinegar. Drinking a little ACV in warm water is also a good idea. Another important one is to take a couple tablespoon-fulls of RAW honey per day. I do this for myself and the kids when I see something starting, and it really works.
05/12/2008 at 3:04 pm Permalink
Nice Article.
Adequate rest and drinking a lot of fluids works for me.
05/12/2008 at 8:17 pm Permalink
Great post!! I’m going to link to you.
Two other points:
1. Raw milk is not mucus forming the way pastuerized milk is so in spite of what your mother told you milk won’t make your stuffy nose worse.
2. Plenty of vitamin C. Like 2-5K mg/day
Katie
05/12/2008 at 8:24 pm Permalink
Thanks, Katie!
I really should have done a Top 15 or Top 20 list.
I wanted to include sunshine & fresh air, for example. And your idea of vitamin C is right on.
Top 15 doesn’t sound as good as Top 10.
Where did you learn that about raw milk not being mucus forming? I suspected that but I had no sources to support my theory.
06/12/2008 at 5:51 am Permalink
Elderberrysirup( something you make in september….- works so well on the flue..
1 kg) elderberries woody stems removed and rinsed ( use common black elder)
1 liter water
500 g sugar ( I havn´t tried it with other sweetner yet but I do think honey might be good as well)
one freshly-squeezed lemon
1. Put the elderberries in a large, non aluminium pot with the water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a low boil and cook for 15-20 minutes, until tender and soft.
2. Pass through a food mill, then discard the skins and stems
3. Pour the juice back into the pot sieve it trough a fine mesh (?)
add sugar, and cook at a low boil over moderate heat for 15 minutes, until the syrup has thickened .Add lemon juice. Cool completely.
4. Pour into a bottle or jar and store in the refrigerator or cold larder.
I sometimes combine other dark berries like raspberries,blueberries and dark sour cherries with the elderberries.
But it is really the elderberries that works against the flu:
A few clinical studies have shown effectiveness of Sambucol, a formulation based on an extract of elderberry, in the treatment of both adults and children with either type A or B influenza. Sambucol reduced both the severity and duration of flu symptoms in otherwise healthy subjects, but should not be considered a substitute for influenza vaccination in high risk individuals ( ?)
. An in vitro study of Sambucol showed possible effectivness against the H5N1 avian influenza virus
From Wikipedia
I sometimes buy a ready made product… but really I have lots of eldertrees around my hen yard so it is pure lazyness.
06/12/2008 at 7:46 am Permalink
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an elderberry, much less an elderberry bush.
I wonder if other berries work, too? Or is it just elderberries?
06/12/2008 at 9:26 am Permalink
No it just elderberries that contains sambucol
- I think Ca might be too hot ?
- but I know they grow in other parts of US
06/12/2008 at 11:50 am Permalink
The variety usually found in Ca is the blue Elder (Sambucus caerulea). I make a glycerite and tincture with Sambucus canadanesis. I agree with Henriette, Elder is by far my favorite for colds and flu.
Don’t use the red berried Elder.
07/12/2008 at 6:23 am Permalink
I have a bad code right now. Thanks for this post. I have been making stock and had a nice hot bowl of oxtail stock for breakfast. Will continue it thru the day. I will do as you said and increase my cod liver oil intake while sick. I am interested in the cough syrup you mentioned. By the way, the link doesn’t work, but I will google it. Thanks again. The post is very helpful
03/01/2009 at 4:14 pm Permalink
We met at the Farmers Market and I have told so many about your site…and HORRORS I made a huge faux paux apparently ( per my hubby later ) – a cultural miscommunication bc I am Canadian, not American, while talking to you. At any rate – great site. I want to join the milk run as I am pregnant and am supposed to be drinkin a QUART of milk each day per WP folks. Where are you getting safe oysters…I have been thinkin we should get more of this into our diets, but have been uncertain about their safety….take care. A kiss to you lovely baby. Di
04/01/2009 at 6:42 am Permalink
Hi, Diane,
What faux pas?
I think I got an email from you a while ago but for the life of me I can’t find it — not sure what happened to it.
Congratulations on your pregnancy! What is your due date? That is wonderful news!
You can get oysters at the farmer’s market. Rob is at the Sunday market sometimes but he is always at the Saturday market (Santa Monica).
07/02/2009 at 9:57 pm Permalink
My nose is plugged…and that means a neti pot tonight and raw egg smoothies tomorrow! Yeah!
Love this post.
24/06/2009 at 8:06 am Permalink
Good home remedies for your lawn is by Maintaining a nice lawn requires proper fertilization and watering, insect and disease control, and thatch control.
24/06/2009 at 8:07 am Permalink
Aeration of your lawn once (fall) or twice (spring & fall) a year will help prevent thatch buildup, improve the penetration of fertilizer and lime into the root zone, and allow the soil to “breathe”. We use the machines that pull a soil plug.
24/06/2009 at 8:07 am Permalink
When thatch approaches or exceeds the “threshold” of 1/2-inch thick, it becomes necessary to employ physical thatch removal. We use a flail-type machine which we found works the best.