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10 Common Sense Ways to Avoid Getting the Flu

January 14, 2013

As much as we might try to avoid it, anyone can come down with the flu after exposure to the virus, even if you got the flu vaccine (now thought to be around 60% effective for this year). Sometimes it’s good to get a reminder of how hygienic you can keep your your immediate environment and, with just a little bit of effort, keep the flu virus away from your household.

1. Make your house a shoe-free zone. Shoes go everywhere we go, but by the dirtiest route. Germs can enter our homes carried on the soles of our shoes after we walk through someone else’s sneeze, spit, or cough. I read once that germs can live on inanimate surfaces for hours or maybe even longer. Eeewww. In our house we leave our shoes at the door.

2. Do not share towels. Designate personal towels in household bathrooms and enforce respect for the concept. I like to give each person their own color towels to make it easier to remember which are yours. Wash your towels often.

3. Don’t touch public door knobs or handles. After washing hands in a restroom, don’t re-soil yourself by grabbing onto a door knob that many hands have touched. Use the same paper towel as you used to dry your hands to provide a defensive layer between your clean hand and the dirty knob or handle; or pull a sleeve over your hand to prevent skin-to-knob contact.

4. Avoid touching stair rails, elevator buttons, ATM buttons, light switches, money, or other places where untold numbers of people have placed their germy fingers. Wear gloves or employ the sleeve-trick to minimize skin-to-germ contact, and wash hands well after contact.

5. Make it habit to wash your hands anytime you enter your house, no matter where you have been or what you have been doing. Enforce this rule for all household members and guests to your house.

6. Perform a Sinus Rinse or Neti Pot rinse after contact with crowds or sick people. If you can flush away the germs before they take up residence in the warm, inviting mucous tissues in your nose, then you have a better chance of keeping a full-blown infection at bay. Dirty sinus cavities are breeding grounds for infections.

7. Blow your nose often or whenever needed to remove excess mucous. Do not simply snort your snot back up into your head; the human body encapsulates foreign molecules inside mucous for the specific purpose of facilitating removal from the body. Your body wants you to blow your nose and remove the irritation! When my 7th grade Home Ec teacher, Evvie, heard a sniffle, she was known for shoving a tissue box at the offender with the admonition to “Stop recycling!” As I’ve aged I’ve grown to appreciate more of Evvie’s wisdom than I did when I was twelve.

8. Isolate sick family members until they are healthier. Do not invite sick people to the dinner table or allow them in common areas. Make them comfortable and keep them hydrated as much as possible. Here are some remedies for flu that you can offer, along with chicken broth/soup and weak tea.

9. Bring your own equipment to the gym. Lots of virus and bacteria molecules can be shed through sweat so invest in your own hand-weights and yoga mats, and be sure to wipe down shared machines with anti-bacterial wipes or sprays.

10. Take probiotics. Keep your body in a shape to repel unwanted invaders with regular doses of probiotics like those found in Good Belly Probiotic drink. In my personal experience, my kids and I stay healthier during the school year when we drink Good Belly regularly.

If you still end up getting the flu after all of your preventative efforts, try this homeopathic flu remedy – an essential to keep in the house during flu season!

Natural Sinus Remedies for Stuffy Noses and Colds

January 11, 2013

This question was posted on my local mom’s listserve today: My son has had a cold for several months now and after rounds of antibiotics, nasal steroids and surgery, his cold isn’t going away. A nurse at his ENT dr’s office suggested a sinus rinse. Well, it appears that a sinus rinse is torturous for him and he screams and moves away as best as he can. Does anyone have any suggestions? I’ve showed him videos on the Internet of other children doing the same thing which was no help. I can stomach only so much of his screaming. ~Annie

Annie, I can relate to your dilemma! My kids balk at doing sinus rinses, too, but I’ve come up with some alternatives that they can handle and work to not only bring immediate relief but also to speed healing by clearing sinus passages.

1. Instead of an active Sinus Rinse involving flushing out the sinus passages, I tend to use a preservative-free saline sinus spray with my kids. They accept it better, and will blow their nose after I squirt into the nostril. The saline loosens the mucous so that it will move out more easily and uses osmosis to decrease inflammation in the sinus cavity. Unfortunately, however, this may be hard with a 2-year old who may not understand how to blow his nose properly. Just have him do the best he can.

2. Sinusin by Heel is a miracle remedy for opening clogged nasal passages. Agitate the bottle first by slamming it into your palm a few times, then squirt up each nostril. Encourage him to blow his nose, but don’t get into a fight about it; it’s ok if he doesn’t blow, too. Sinusin is non-medicinal and homeopathic, so you can feel safe about using it with your babies, and short-acting, so feel free to repeat it when he appears stuffed or runny again. Sometimes I find doing a second round immediately does the trick. I find Sinusin at Vitamin Cottage Natural Grocers, but I know it is also available on Amazon and may be also at Whole Foods.

3. Place a humidifier in his room at night with a vaporizer dish filled with clean water and 2-3 drops of eucalyptus essential oil. Eucalyptus is a purifying essential oil and breathing the moist, scented air will help clear his sinus passages while he sleeps.

4. Homeopathic Cold Calm by Boiron when taken as tablets dissolved underneath the tongue can offer safe and effective short-term relief from cold symptoms. Give him a tablet whenever symptoms appear; if the symptoms decrease or lessen, you know you have the right remedy. If there is no change within 30 minutes, it is not the right remedy so cease taking it. This one is definitely found at Whole Foods – often next to the registers during cold seasons– as well as at Vitamin Cottage.

Of course, you can use all of these remedies for yourself, too, when needed, with no negative side effects or concern for drug interactions.

To help keep him healthy, consider offering him lots of vitamin C and a daily drink of Good Belly Probiotic Drink.

The Definitive Word on Fructose

January 10, 2013

Fructose makes you fat.

Don’t be fooled: fructose does not come from fruit. It is made in a laboratory out of corn, beets, and sugar cane and is added to packaged foods to make them sweeter.

You might have been under the impression that fructose was a healthier sweetener than, say, Aspartame or high fructose corn syrup (made of corn syrup with added fructose), or even better than plain cane sugar. You were fooled.

Don’t blame yourself! Fructose shows up on labels of foods you might have thought were healthier alternatives, like flavored waters or energy bars, giving the impression that it’s a healthier alternative to sugar.

It’s not.

A recent study out of Yale using MRI technology found that fructose inhibited the brain from switching off the appetite, leading to overeating. In contrast glucose, as found in complex carbohydrates like fruits and vegetables, will turn off hunger when appropriate levels are reached.

Start reading the labels of your foods and you might be surprised everywhere high fructose corn syrup or just plain fructose shows up. And we wonder why we have an obesity epidemic here.

Homopathic Flu Remedy: Oscillo

January 9, 2013

Here’s a story about how I cured my flu last weekend. In what looks to be shaping up as a bad flu season around the nation, it’s helpful to have a remedy ready at hand to minimize the illness and speed the recovery.

On Saturday I awoke with what I thought was a head cold: stuffy/runny nose, headache, fatigue, generally feeling lousy. Over the course of the day I took various homeopathic remedies for sinus congestion and colds, did a few rounds of Sinus Rinse, and drank some garlic tea. On Sunday I awoke after an uncomfortable night with little sleep feeling worse and wanting to just stay in bed as much as possible. My head hurt and even reading felt too strenuous. I drank tea but the idea of food was unappealing.

The thing about homeopathic remedies is that if you don’t have the right remedy, you won’t experience any relief from your symptoms. The wrong remedy won’t make anything worse, but nothing will improve. Clearly I had not hit upon the correct remedy yet for my head cold.

Then, in a conversation with my soon-to-graduate-from-medical-school-younger-brother, he asked if I had experienced any diarrhea. As a matter of fact, I had, though I hadn’t connected it with how I was feeling at the moment. He suggested I might have the flu.

It hadn’t occurred to me that I might have the flu because I hadn’t experienced what I considered to be classic flu symptoms of fever, chills, and body aches. Nor had I vomited, which might also have tipped me off.

I still wasn’t sure what I had was the flu, but thought it would be worth taking the homeopathic flu remedy of Boiron’s Oscillococcinum, just in case. I mixed the contents of a single vial with about 3-4 oz. of clean water, and then put one teaspoon of the water underneath my tongue. I was surprised to find that within 10 minutes I began to feel better. I took another dose 15 minutes later and began to feel even better. I took a third dose about an hour after that, and a final dose at bedtime.

On Monday morning I awoke refreshed after a night of deep, restful sleep. The only lingering symptom was a slight runny nose, but otherwise, I felt energized, hungry, and clear-headed. We loaded up the family and spent a beautiful day skiing in Breckenridge, Colorado, a two-hour drive from our house.

While we of course do all we can to avoid getting the flu in the first place, sometimes you can catch a virus despite your best efforts. Oscillo has worked for my family many times over the years when prevention has failed. Homeopathic remedies are generally safe for anyone to use with no side effects. If, after one teaspoon of the Oscillo water, there is no improvement, it is not the right remedy and you should cease taking it.

This time of year you can often find Oscillococcinum in a Point-of-Purchase display near the check-out stations at natural food stores like Whole Foods.

Cooking Rice in a Glorious One-Pot Meal

January 8, 2013

Reader question: I would like advice. When cooking one pot meals in my cast iron pot, 3.5 quart, most of rice is cooked, but some of the rice is still hard. How can I correct this? ~ Mary D., Lakewood, CO

Hi Mary! There are a few things you can do to help ensure all the rice in a Glorious One-Pot Meal cooks thoroughly:

1. Rinse the rice well in a strainer –until the water runs clear– before adding it to the pot.

2. Add the correct amount of liquid and swirl well to ensure the rice is evenly distributed across the bottom of the pot.

3. Check your oven temperature with a stand-alone oven thermometer to ensure your oven is fully up to 450 F degrees before you place the full Dutch oven inside.

If, after following these instructions you find you are still getting undercooked spots of rice, try adding an addition 1/4 cup of liquid to the pot.

Thanks for your enthusiasm for Glorious One-Pot Meals! Happy cooking!

10 Common Sense Ways to Avoid Getting the Flu

Natural Sinus Remedies for Stuffy Noses and Colds

The Definitive Word on Fructose

Homopathic Flu Remedy: Oscillo

Cooking Rice in a Glorious One-Pot Meal

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