Winter Wellness
Like many families this winter we have battled the flu for a few weeks now.
We picked it up from an adult at a birhtday party, then one by one we all went downhill fast. My children with cystic fibrosis first then the rest of us quickly followed.
Thankfully we are finally out of it after three weeks. Unfortunitly though there seem to be a lot of people, who arent as lucky and are now dealing with chronic coughs, fatigue or other lasting symptom.
So I thought I would share what we did to help our bodies through this illness, with the hopes that it can help even one person.
There arent to many things you can take for the flu that will actually help you get well faster.
But there are things you can do to relieve some of the symptoms and give your body the fuel to keep fighting.
When the first body aches began, I immeditely whipped up a pot of lemon, ginger and tumeric. Once this has simmered slowly you can pour the liquid out and add honey to taste.
I find the addition of tumeric noticeabley helps with the body aches.
BUT WAIT! I hear it now! "You need to add pepper!" you're more than welcome too, and yes it enhances our bodys capability of absorbing the curcumin, but I dont always add it becuase it still works well without it.
Next I chopped up some more garlic and covered it with honey, the sooner you get onto this, the better! You'll need to leave this soaking until the honey turns to a syrup. This is an awesome immune boosting mix as well as a soothing syrup for the throat with antibacterial properties.
This was very helpful to get the garlic into my little ones.
Garlic is one of the most beneficial herbs when youre sick. My family and I have found it extremely helpful with immune boosting properties and its ability to fight any ongoing bacterial infections that can often result from a viral infection. It was especially helpful and entirley cleared up the chest infections and sinusitis that seemed to affected us.
We started a regime of garlic cloves/oil capsules, cod liver oil capsules and elderberry syrup.
It looked something like this.
0900 1x cod liver oil capsule, 1-2 garlic oil capsules ( I took 2 cloves instead) and 1 tablespoon of the elderberry syrup.
1200 1-2 garlic oil capsules ( I took 2 cloves instead) and 1 tablespoon of the elderberry syrup.
1700 1x cod liver oil capsule, 1-2 garlic oil capsules ( I took 2 cloves instead) and 1 tablespoon of the elderberry syrup.
We always notice a quick improvement once we star to take our cod liver oil capsules again.
I never give more than two small capsules in a day for my little ones, I was warned by my CF team to be cautious of the Vitamin A levels with taking to many.
This is something I am always mindfull of when taking cod liver oil. Usually we take one capsule per day, but if there is a bug that we are fighting I increase it to 1 capsule taken twice in a day.
If this is something that concerns you, give your little ones 1 capsule in a day.
Now my children will happily chew through these capsules, but they can also swallow them.
If this is something you struggle to get into them you can pop them and mix with something more pleasant.
My children will usually take most things I give them if they know it is a medicine that will help their bodies.
You may have to trouble shoot this if your child is struggling to swallow them. We found that giving the small capsules with a teaspoon of yogurt initially helped them to learn how to swallow the capsules.
One of the next things that really helped us to clear out all the chest gunk was a nebulizer.
My children used one from the hospital that we are issued for our CF children.
You can find simple ones online. I didnt use this and noticed that my coughing has lasted longer then my childrens.
Another option for this is to do steams. you can put hot water in a tub, cover with a towel and breath in the vapors.
Chamomile steams are great for the lungs.
Be cautious with this though, I would allow the water a little bit of time to cool off before popping my head under the towel to breathe in the steam.
When you're sick, people will often lean on quick and easy foods becuase who feels like cooking a full meal when you're unwell!
BUT this is a huge contributing factor to why it takes you longer to recover!
We found our freezer stash of bone broths and chicken soup super helpful on the really rough days.
A lot of easy food is full of ingredients that actually suppresses your immune system and can make you sicker.
My crockpot whole chicken was a super simple cooking method that required very little energy but ensured my family got the nutrients they needed to recover.
You roast your chicken in a crockpot, then break down the chicken stripping off the meat. FIll your crockpot with water, add the bones and leave the juices and fat from the roasting process. Allow this to cook for at least 5 hours, then you can make this into a soup, or a base for a stew. Your body needs easy to digest warming foods while youre sick. Or at least I feel so much better eating foods like this when I'm sick.
My chilren snacked on dried fruits (mainly ones I have made myself), nuts or fresh fruit and veges.
Things we avoid while sick are:
Anything with sugar, things like confectionary, baking, muesli bars etc
Any processed foods or prepackaged meals
Breads and pastas, this ties into the easy to digest foods, I can often feel quite heavy eating any shop bought breads and pastas.
Along with good nutrious food, you want to keep yourself hydrated.
I'm not just talking about drinking litres of water, our body can only absorb so much plain water and often needs electrolyes or even celtic salt to absorb the water and utilize it more efficiently.
A super simple rehydration recipe I have used for year is
6 tsps Sugar, (or 5 tsps of Honey)
1tsp Salt
1ltr of water
You can drink this freely throughout the day.
You can replace the water with Coconut water, you can swap the sugar with honey, you can even add bicarbonate of soda.
But when I need it I just make hte simple recipe because I always have these ingredients on hand.
Something that is not valued enough is getting outside and grounding yourself when youre sick. Bundle up and head out into the fresh air. There is nothing worse than feeling claustraphobic after a few days stuck inside when youre sick. The fresh air will do you good.
I even recommend leaving your window open at night in your room. Ensure you have enough layers on so you dont catch a chill.
One other thing that abosulty saved my back with the week of body aches I had was my Shakti acupressure mat!
This is one took that I have come to love in the evenings when I'm feeling overwhelmed and tired.
The pressure on my back completely cleared up my back ache, when I relapsed a bit after taking my youngest to the hospital my back was the only part of me that did not ache. I thought that was a very interesting thing to note!
While this sums up everything that I can remember that I did to help my family through the horrible bug we got. I hope you can gleen even a little to use with your family.
Many blessings from my home to yours
I wish peace and rest to your soul
Meg
Disclaimed, this is not medical advice. This is simply me sharing what I used with my family.
If you do try any of the above and you become concerned with your symptoms please head to a medical professional.
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