My Medicine Cabinet

I got a call from a friend this evening asking me what she should give her little girl who has a 103 fever. I said, "Well, I would give her homeopathic belladonna, but you probably don't have that." "What's belladonna?" she replied. Long story short, I took her a goody bag of home remedies that have worked for me in the past. I just got an email from her telling me that her daughter's fever is gone now. :) Pretty cool, huh?

Here are my favorite preventative and treatment options for the upcoming cold/flu season.

• Preventative: (this list does not, and I repeat, does not, include a flu vaccine.)
• D3!!! I have ALWAYS gotten sick when the kids have, up until a year or so ago when I started taking 6000iu of oil based D3 each day. I had read a book (The UltraMind Solution) about how 90% of Americans are deficient in this vitamin and how deficiencies cause all sorts of problems. If any of these describe you, you are most likely Vitamin D3 deficient.

• You have sore or weak muscles
• You have tender bones
• You live north of Florida
• You wear sunblock most of the time
• You work indoors
• You have an autoimmune disease
• You have cancer
•   Okay, so where and what type and how much? It needs to be oil-based to be easily assimilated by the body. This is what I buy for myself and this is what I buy for my kids. Vit. D is not water soluble, so there is a very small toxicity risk. From everything I've read though, the deficiencies are so great here, that it would be pretty difficult to hit the toxic level taking the amount I take if any of the above describe you. Oncologists are telling their patients to take it because early studies are showing it to be extremely effective in killing cancer cells.  
• Probiotics - 80% of your immunity is in your gut. Keeping the balance of good bacteria greater than the bad bacteria is extremely important to your overall health. I just started making water and milk kefir, which is an amazingly potent source of probiotics. Here's a link to a previous blog on water kefir. There's also capsules that my family has taken for years. Here's a previous blog on those. 
• Colloidal Silver - this is something that I give the kids if they've been exposed to someone who was sick and also when they're sick. It is a very powerful natural antibiotic without the side effects of prescription antibiotics. We have used this for years very successfully. (It also makes an amazing deodorant if applied with a q-tip!) You can take it internally or apply it topically to cuts, scrapes, acne, boils, etc. You can pour it in your ear for an ear infection. They have this at health food stores and it is pretty pricey. I have read conflicting things about whether lower strength or higher strength is better, but what I've used for 15 years has always worked great, so I'm sticking with it. Here's what we buy (extra strength).
• Treatment options: I will usually do all of these at the onset of an illness and until it is gone.

• Water kefir and kombucha are very powerful natural antibiotics, 8-16oz/day. 
• Colloidal Silver - 1 tsp, 3x/day until better.
• D3 - 2,000iu every other day for kids during cold/flu season.
• Homeopathic remedies - ever since the kids had chicken pox and the homeopathic belladonna took their fever from 104 down to 101 in under two minutes, I have been a believer. Homeopathy operates on the principle of like treating like. So they use an infinitesimally small amount to stimulate the body's natural healing in that area. There are no side effects and there is no way to overdose on homeopathic medicine. I think I read that you would have to take over 1000 doses to even get a headache as a side effect. It's something ridiculous like that. I was very skeptical at first, because it just didn't make sense to me, but it works! Homeopathy has been around for hundreds of years and is even documented in medical studies to work. Here are some common symptoms and what I use. For more info on homeopathy, I recommend this book.
• Fever: I am a fan of letting a fever run it's course, so I don't even treat it with homeopathic remedies unless it gets too high (103-104). It's the body's way of killing off the bacteria that has invaded. When fever gets too high, I give them homeopathic Belladonna. If you google, make sure to enter "homeopathic belladonna" or you'll get something totally different. Here is the brand I buy and of course, I get it from vitacost. 
• Teething: Hylands Chamomilla I've found that the individual remedies work better for Owen than the "teething tablet" combination ones you buy at Walmart. 
• Sore throat or teething: Calcarea Phos.. This also helps to strengthen the teeth, therefore preventing cavities. 
• Urinary tract infections or bladder irritability: Cantharis - we use this a lot, for Maggie and myself. 
• Nausea or indigestion - Nux Vomica 
• Colds and fevers - Acon. Napellus
• Mosquito bites, anything that itches - Rhus Tox, this is a lifesaver over here. You can dissolve the pellets and make a paste and rub it directly on. The itch is gone immediately. 
• There are so many more remedies, but this is what I use most of the time. The site http://abchomeopathy.com/go.php has a great remedy finder that I use all the time where you plug in your symptoms. 

      
You would think that my kids never get sick with all this prevention and healthy food I feed them :) They do. A lot. Especially when we take them to the church nursery. I attribute this to the fact that they have never been around a lot of kids and their germs consistently, so their immune systems don't have all the antibodies that a lot of other kids do. Here's the cool thing though, even though they pick up pretty much every new virus they're exposed to, they have NEVER been on antibiotics. A cold has never once turned into a sinus infection. My kids have never had croup. They've never had an ear infection. I don't take my kids to the doctor when they have a fever, because I know that they'll be fine in about 24 hours. So, when you see my facebook posts about my kids being sick, don't write my advice off, because all of the above help them get back to 100% extremely quicker than most kids I know. A pediatrician we saw only one time told me that I was "lucky." Ha. She has no idea what goes into keeping my kiddos healthy, thank you very much.  Luck has nothing to do with it.

Another great blog on home remedies...