Hello!
Today I wanted to share with you some tips, herbs and supplements to help you with the cold or flu. These tips will help you to boost your immune system so your body can heal itself. Recently, I was sick – which rarely happens! However, this was a great opportunity for me to find more potent holistic remedies to help me recover.
Check out the video here:
To start this book, Holistic Herbal, was really inspirational and practical. I used it while studying herbal medicine. It is quite practical and gives recipes for herbs to help with specific issues. I focused on expectorants and demulcents. Expectorants help to remove phlegm and demulcents help to coat any soar tissue due to inflammation. Win win for my crazy phlegmy cough!
Here are they herbs I used and the properties I wanted:
Herbs:
- Angelica Root, Star Anise: have a combination of expectorant and demulcent properties
- Elderberries: helps with upper respiratory inflammation.
- Elder flowers: anti-catarrhal (helps to remove excess mucous) and mucous membranes tonic
Tea 1 Recipe:
- 1 tsp Elderberries
- 1 tsp Elderberry flowers
- 1 tsp Angelica root
- 4 star anise
Directions:
- Steep for 20-30min in about 450ml hot water.
- Have 3x per day (reuse the same ingredients as first cup)
Another tea I had a lot of was ginger turmeric tea. Turmeric is an anti-inflammatory and potent blood cleanser. Ginger is great for immunity (due to zinc), it is a warming root that helps to heat up the body and combat cold. It creates circulation to bring blood flow to that area and more nutrition and focus the body.
Add in fresh lemon when the tea is warm. Lemon is great for the liver, contains vitamin C, is alkalinizing and helps in overall immunity and detox.
Tea 2 Recipe:
- 1 inch grated fresh ginger
- 1 tsp turmeric
- 1/2 fresh lemon squeezed
Directions:
- Steep ginger + turmeric in 1/2 cup hot water for 5 minutes
- Add 1/2 cup cold water (or less) to make the tea warm
- Add fresh lemon
Supplements:
Vitamin D: As for supplements I increased my vitamin D significantly. I would suggest reaching out to a practitioner to see how high you can go.
Vitamin C: I also added in liposomal vitamin C that was 1000mg. this type of vitamin C is encapsulated in fat so it remains in our system longer. Vitamin C is excreted every 4 hours as it is water soluble but in this fat soluble form it remains in the system longer.
Probiotics: this is another great immunity booster because our gut houses the majority of our lymphatic tissue (our immune system).
I also added in this tea with cleavers which help to move lymph as it is the main fluid that cleanses our system.
I hope these tips help. I would prefer to use herbs and supplements to help boost my immune system than conventional prescriptions that only address part of the issue and mask others. This sets us up to fail in the future as we don’t go to the root cause of immunity and only suppress it to feel better.
Of course in an acute situation conventional allopathic care may be required and definitely has its place!
To boosting our immunity holistically!
~Michelle
