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Fighting Winter Colds and Flu
Prevention is the best course of action during cold and flu season. Keep your body healthy with a balanced, hearty whole foods diet (avoid processed foods stimulants and sugar), lenty of fluids, and a low stress lifestyle including plenty of sleep, regular exercise, and maintaining your social supports.
Toning your lungs and immune system with powerhouses like garlic, burdock, dandelion and elecampane is your best bet. But, if you are struck by cold or flu this season, don’t dispair. Mother nature has provided for you! To ease nasal congestion, try some peppermint tea, fenugreek and thyme. For cough and sore throat, try hyssop, horehound, elecampane, licorice, yarrow, mullein, or slippery elm. To create heat and support your immune system, try ginger, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, echinacea, astragalus, or dandelion. For earache or ear infections, try infused oil of mullein. Essential oils of camphor, eucalyptus and wintergreen help to clear congestion (do not use directly on skin and never use internally).
Naturopathic doctors suggest a commonsense way to approach the flu is to eat simply, “sip and slurp” (tea, juice, water, soup), and allowing your fever to work for you. Unless you are very uncomfortable, your fever reaches 102 dergeees or persists, Dr. Elizabeth Wotton, ND, suggests avoiding over-the-counter medications such as tylenol and allowing the heat of the fever to fight infection in your body. Dr. Wotton advises that you see your healthcare professional of your fever rises above 101 degrees, if you have persistent fever, cough or fluid loss, convulsions, rash, or if your symptoms worsen or do not improve within 3 or 4 days of treatment.
Beating the Winter Blues
Beating the Winter Blues Naturally & Holistically
In this post holiday winter season, many of us experience the blues. With the dark, bleary weather and stress of the holidays, it’s easy to find yourself feeling stressed, down, and spent. Here are a few tips to turn things around.
Avoid stimulants and alcohol. While both may help you temporarily, they really tend to add to the problem rather than make it better in the long run. Try to stay away from caffeine, decongestants and chocolate. Drink lots of water. Dehydration can cause fatigue.
Keep a regular sleep schedule. With the change in time and the change in light/dark schedule, our circadian rhythms can be thrown off, leaving us feeling stressed, tired and depressed. It’s not only important to get you eight hours of sleep, but also to keep a regular sleep schedule. That means the same time to bed and the same time up in the morning. Really! It works! Get some sunshine. When the sun peaks out, get out there and soak up the rays. If there is prolonged darkness, consider lighting that simulates natural light.
Diet and exercise. You’ve heard this before? After the usual over indulgence during the holidays, lack of sleep, hurried pace and lack of time for regular exercise, it is even more important now to follow a healthy, whole foods diet and exercise regularly. You don’t have to run a marathon and starve yourself. Eat simply and healthy and move your body!
Talk. Now is the time to rely on your friends, family and spiritual supports to talk through your feelings and what is going on in your life that may be adding to your stress. Empathy is a great healer! Practice your spirituality.
If your blues last longer than a few weeks, interfere with you work or social functioning, do not respond or worsen with your natural remedies, or occurs post-partum, please see your healthcare provider.
Some Yoga & Meditation to Alleviate Depression
Asanas: Gently open your lower back in Apanasana, or lying knee to chest pose. Breathe.
Try Dvipada Pitham, or vinyasa style bridge pose. Inhale with pelvis up and arms above the head, exhale and release.
Invigorate with 12 position sun salutation.
Sixth Chakra or Third Eye Point: Focus on your third eye chakra, whose shadow emotion is depression. Try the kundalini Bowing Exercise with Sat Nam or “I am” mantra. Sit on your heels in kneeling position. With palms flat in front of you, lower your upper body to the floor until your third eye chakra, the point between your eyes, touches the floor. Raise back up. Repeat this motion, chanting “Sat” as you come up ,and “Nam” as you go downward. Continue for at least three minutes.
Meditation: Try a weight lifting meditation. No, don’t meditate on lifting weights, but rather on relieving yourself of the emotional weight and stress that you have been carrying. Lie flat on your back on corpse pose, or in a comfortable seated position with back straight. Close your eyes. Don’t try to stop thoughts from coming to your mind, but allow them to pass by you, as if watching scenery go by from a train. You might try imagining a box somewhere in the room, and as thoughts pass you by they go into the box to be attended to later, if necessary. Now, allow yourself to feel your emotions, pain, stress, even for just a few moments. Feel how heavy it is. Now imagine that heaviness floating up, becoming lighter as it rises through you. The heaviness leaves you through your crown chakra, passes through your aura, and goes out into the universe to be cleansed, while you remain grounded. Allow yourself to feel your new lightness. Breathe.
Gentle Herbal Allies for the Blues
There are so many herbal allies to help alleviate the blues! Try oatstraw, which nourishes our whole body but especially our nervous system. Make an infusion by placing 1 ounce of dry herb in a heat proof jar (try a simple canning jar) and fill the jar with boiling water. Cover and allow to steep for at least 4 hours or overnight. Drink 2 to 4 cups of the infusion per day. If your mood is related to your menstrual cycle, try motherwort tea. If your mood is related to stress and worry, try some chamomile tea or infusion, or try skullcap tea . If you suffer from depression, you might try St. John’s Wort tea.
Garlic Beef Soup
Winter Garlic Soup - nourishes the body while garlic supports your immune & respiratory system
This is hearty & healthful soup for winter from the garden
Start the stock in the morning or night before with:
8 qts of water in a stock pot
2 pounds of beef (this week I used some stew meat and a steak with bone in)
2 heaping tablespons of fresh, minced garlic
2 medium onion, coarsely chopped
4 fresh sprigs of rosemary (about 4 inches long easch)
1 bunch of fresh parsley, chopped
1 sprig of lovage, chopped (this usually comes from the freezer in February)
Bring to boil on high and reduce heat to medium to simmer for 4-6 hours.
Cool enough to get out any bones and rosemary stem.
Add 1 cup of brown rice or whole wheat pasta.Add winter vegetables of choice. This week I used a bowl of broccoli, chopped cabbage, snowpeas & carrots.
Bring to boil on high and reduce to simmer for about an hour.
Add sea salt to taste.
We like to have this with multigrain bread or biscuits with butter.
Enjoy!