Snot, Snot, and More Snot...

It’s everywhere.  Everyone is congested or drippy or goopy or hacking or some form of pleasantry in that category.  So what are some good ways to boost the immune system naturally and help fight off all this gunk, or prevent it all together?

I read somewhere that a cold left untreated lasts 2 weeks, but treated with medicine lasts 14 days… Yeah pretty much.  So basically all we can do is relieve symptoms and keep it from snowballing into something much worse, and just ride it out.  I’m still on a quest to learn more about the common cold, but in the meantime I have learned ways to relieve it.  I’ve also found ways to stave it off, but, alas, sometimes there’s just no avoiding those pesky germs!

I’ve already shared my love of essential oils with you, so you probably have some ideas of what those can do, but to recap along the lines of today’s theme, Peppermint and Eucalyptus are wonderful for the common cold.  Some ways to use it are:

• Dripping a couple of drops into a pot of boiling water, tenting a towel over your head and the pot, and creating your own mini-sauna as you breathe in the oil-infused steam.  Aaaahhhh hello open sinuses!
• Rubbing the oils on your feet before you go to sleep at night is great too, as your feet have larger pores and absorb the oils’ healing properties quickly.
• Mixing it with coconut or olive oil and rubbing it on your chest, like homemade Vick’s (only without the petroleum jelly!  Score!).
• Drip a drop of [therapeutic grade!!] peppermint oil in hot tea and breathe in the steam and sip away – the peppermint is wonderfully soothing on the throat.  Mix a little raw honey in that tea for added benefits (which I'm getting to in a moment!)
• Drip a few drops of each into your bath water and soak.  I do this for Harlee all the time!  Benefits both of us as I sit with him and breathe it in too.

There are plenty of other ways to help your immune system along too.  Some good tips to prevent a cold for adults that have worked for me are taking a bunch of echinacea, vitamin C, pau d’arco, and garlic.  Goldenseal is another good one, which I need to get more into, but all my friends in the natural community swear by it just as much as echinacea and vitamin C.

Echinacea is pretty commonly used – usually people know what I’m talking about when I mention it whether they try to go the more natural route with their lifestyles or not.  Here’s an excerpt from herbs.org that explains how beneficial Echinacea is:

Echinacea increases the "non-specific" activity of the immune system. In other words, unlike a vaccine which is active only against a specific disease, echinacea stimulates the overall activity of the cells responsible for fighting all kinds of infection. Unlike antibiotics, which are directly lethal to bacteria, echinacea makes our own immune cells more efficient in attacking bacteria, viruses and abnormal cells, including cancer cells.

Echinacea facilitates wound healing, lessens symptoms of and speeds recovery from viruses. Anti-inflammatory effects make it useful externally against inflammatory skin conditions including psoriasis and eczema. It may also increase resistance to candida, bronchitis, herpes, and other infectious conditions.

Wonderful, wonderful stuff :).

Moving along, I’d have to worry if you don’t know anything about Vitamin C, but as a little refresher, among a lot of other health benefits, it’s most important job is boosting your immune system, plain and simple.  It comes naturally from fruits and vegetables, too, yum!

Pau d’Arco, what’s that?  It’s a pretty strong immune system boosting herb that I found out about when I was dealing with my chronic yeast infection issue.  It’s anti-inflammatory, anti-infectious, and a great aid for detoxing.  I wouldn’t recommend this if you’re pregnant or nursing – it’s really really powerful stuff – almost too harsh for baby.  But I’ve recommended it to quite a few people who have reported back that it’s helped them out, especially for avoiding getting sick during cold and flu season.

Garlic is amazing.  Here’s an article about some scientific research done on how and why garlic works so well.  I’ll help sum it up too though.  It’s a powerful antioxidant, and it’s a natural antibiotic.  What’s cool about garlic as an antibiotic, though, is that the bacteria in the body can’t develop a resistance to it like they can against pharmaceutical antibiotics, so it can work over and over again!  That and it’s not killing all your good bacteria, like pharmaceutical antibiotics do, as I explained in a previous post.

But wait, there’s more!  Garlic contains a phytochemical called “allicin” which is released when the garlic is chopped or minced or chewed, and this protects your body against bacterial infections among other ailments.  Allicin is especially effective against enterococci (a strain of strep) and staphylococcus, which can be difficult bacteria to battle!  Oh and get this, a study was done at the National Cancer Institute in the US which showed that garlic can both slow the growth of cancer cells as well as cause abnormal cells to self-destruct.  Wow!  Check out this article to learn more about garlic (oh yes, there is more!).  Surely it can help fight against the common cold.

What I like about garlic is that, obviously, you can cook with it!  Incorporate it into most, if not all, of your meals during cold and flu season for an easy boost to your immune system.  There are other great herbs you can incorporate into dinner too that are also great for your health.  Thyme is antibacterial, antiseptic, anti-inflammatory, and is an antioxidant.  It’s also beneficial for treating bronchitis.  Sage is anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and a great detoxifier for the blood.  Hmm… throw in some chicken broth, veggies, and chicken and we’ve got the ingredients for a great soup for anyone under the weather!

Need something sweet after that soup?  Try honey: it fights colds and respiratory infections, is great for allergies, and according to Dr. Cass Igram, D.O. in The Survivor’s Nutritional Pharmacy, "Raw honey is exceptionally effective internally against bacteria and parasites. Plus, raw honey contains natural antibiotics, which help kill microbes directly. Raw honey, when applied topically, speeds the healing of tissues damaged by infection and/or trauma. It contains vitamins, minerals and enzymes, as well as sugars, all of which aid in the healing of wounds."  Click here for some great honey remedies!

One last suggestion before I wrap this up, and it’s a simple one: fresh air.  One of the biggest reasons we get sick during the winter is being cooped up inside hiding from the cold and breathing in each other’s germs.  Every time we exhale we release toxins from our bodies.  Staying cooped up inside just creates an environment of old, stale air and all the germs and toxins we release from inside.  Oxygen is vital for our bodies – our cells need it to develop and function at a healthy level.  When we stay cooped up inside, we’re depriving our cells and our bodies of that very important element.  One thing I’ve found that helps at home is every morning I open the window wide and let the air in while I go about my morning routine of making the bed, brushing my teeth, etc.  I leave it open for about 10-15 minutes or so, enough to get some good fresh oxygen in, flush out our stale air, but not freeze us out in the winter.  I try to open up the rest of the house in intervals, too, to freshen up all the rooms.  It’s a very simple thing to do, but helps tremendously!

I hope that provided some good tips for cold and flu season.  Feel free to leave a comment to share some of your own home remedies for beating those germs!

Guilt-Free Friday: Pancakes

So I was craving pancakes Sunday morning.  I was lying in bed thinking about the days when I wasn’t aware of what carbs and gluten were doing to my body and I’d hop out of bed and whip up a batch and enjoy them with my fake syrup and then lay around feeling happily bloated all morning (happily only because it tasted sooooo goooood…).  Ah, those were the good ol’ days… Okay not really.  I’m really okay avoiding all that stuff, and honestly it’s been a very fun challenge finding alternatives like pizza and pasta!  I can honestly say I don’t miss any of that stuff.

It’s been really rewarding, too, because THREE TIMES in ONE DAY I got comments from people that I’m “looking good” or “losing weight”.  I got all excited when I heard this, thanked them graciously, and said I’m really happy to hear that because I haven’t really been doing anything, so I had no clue if I was or not!  I haven’t been on a scale in several weeks either so I have no clue what my progress has been…  But I got to thinking – “I haven’t been doing anything” was an honest statement, but not all together true… I HAVE been doing something, it’s just become easy and second nature now that I don’t FEEL like I’m doing anything.  Yay!  That’s a huge breakthrough!

No way was I going to ruin my progress by making the old school pancakes!  So off to the wonderful worldwide web I went in search of a paleo pancake recipe, hopefully calling for ingredients I had on hand.  All from the comfort of my bed (what was I doing before my smart phone came into my life?).  I found the perfect recipe on a blog called Paleo Table.

My good friend came over with her kids as I was making these.  We planned to make homemade Kahlua after the pancakes, and the pancakes were definitely a wonderful precursor to our mission (which, by the way, the kahlua turned out AWESOME, but it’s not exactly good for you so I won’t be sharing that recipe here, as it’s a bit out of the scope of this blog… but I’d happily admit it’s good for the soul!).  She said they were the best she’d ever eaten!  I had to agree… All three of our kiddos scarfed them down along with us!

They were even better with melted butter and maple syrup… mmmmmm…

They look mouth-watering and delicious even with the crappy quality of the photo I took with my phone!

Which brings me to a quick little spiel about butter and syrup.  With either of those, I’m talking about the real thing.  I’ll start with butter.  The alternative that most everyone uses is margarine, which is basically just processed chemicals and vegetable oil made to resemble butter but with less saturated fat and cholesterol (so it’s healthy for your heart, supposedly).  Unfortunately the stick margarine has trans-fats, which are really really bad for you (in a nutshell, consuming trans-fatty acids can lead to deformed cellular membranes, which can increase cancer risks, promote inflammation, and speed up degeneration in tissues).  Butter, however, is a natural product – its fatty acids are similar to our bodies’ fatty acids, so it's easier for our digestive systems to figure out what to do with it.  It’s higher in saturated fat and cholesterol, though, which is why margarine has been more attractive to people.  But, what we don’t realize is that even though the oils that go into margarine are unsaturated, they become more saturated as they’re processed to turn into a harder spread.  Even though margarine doesn’t contain cholesterol, it still stimulates your body to make cholesterol when you eat it, so it’s really not as “heart healthy” as it comes off!

This information was taken from an article written by Dr. Andrew Weil, if you’d like to read more – it gives you a history of margarine and how it originated (kind of disgusting, I’m glad it’s come along as far as it has!) and a bit of a chemistry lesson on each product.  Ultimately, if you have to choose between one or the other, he suggests going with the real thing – butter.  And I agree.  It makes more sense.  But I also agree that it should be consumed in moderation.  It may be the natural choice, but that doesn’t make it entirely healthy… just a lot less detrimental to your health overall than margarine!

Maple syrup, however, has some big differences between real and fake.  Here are the ingredients in Aunt Jemima’s syrup: CORN SYRUP, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, WATER, CELLULOSE GUM, CARAMEL COLOR, SALT, SODIUM BENZOATE AND SORBIC ACID (PRESERVATIVES), ARTIFICIAL AND NATURAL FLAVORS, SODIUM HEXAMETAPHOSPHATE.  Here are the ingredients in organic, grade B maple syrup: ORGANIC MAPLE SYRUP.  Hmmm…. Which would you rather consume?  If you’re still undecided, how about we look at the nutrition facts?  Aunt Jemima: ¼ cup contains 120 mg of sodium, 52 mg of carbohydrates (32 mg of which are [refined] sugar), aaaannnndddd that’s it.  The real stuff?  The only thing that’s the same is the carbohydrates, except the sugar isn’t refined, otherwise it contains the minerals calcium, potassium, manganese, magnesium, phosphorus, and iron; the vitamins B2, B5, B6, niacin, biotin, and folic acid; and it also contains amino acids which are building blocks of proteins.

Need I say more?

Now go stock your fridge and pantry with REAL food, not stuff that’s been chemically altered to resemble food, and enjoy the health benefits!

And now for that recipe!

Ingredients
Dry
1 1/2 cups almond flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4-1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 packet Stevia
Wet
3 large eggs, room temperature*
4-5 Tbsp full-fat coconut milk (I used almond milk as that’s all I had on hand)
2 Tbsp raw honey
1 tsp pure vanilla extract (again with the REAL thing!  Why eat “imitation” vanilla?  Imposter!  Do your body a favor and consume things it can recognize!)

*You can quickly bring whole eggs to room temperature by setting them in a bowl of very warm tap water for about 5 minutes.

Preparation

1. Sift dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl, forming a well in the center with a spoon.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, 4 Tbsp milk, honey, and vanilla.
3. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and mix well with a spoon. If the batter is dry, add 1 Tbsp coconut milk.
4. Let batter sit for 5 minutes.
5. Coat cooking surface with coconut oil.
6. Set griddle to 300 degrees or warm skillet over medium heat.
7. Scoop 1 Tbsp of batter onto prepared griddle. Repeat to make small pancakes.
8. Cook 2 minutes on first side or until bubbles start forming around the edges. 
9. Flip and cook 1 minute on second side or until center is cooked through.
10. Keep cooked pancakes warm in a low oven (170 degrees F).
11. Garnish with honey, pastured butter, fresh fruit, or raw maple syrup.  Enjoy!

By the way, these freeze really well, so I recommend going ahead and making a double batch - you'll be glad you did on those mornings you're feeling rushed and need something quick to pop in the toaster and take with you on the go!

Essential Oils

I’ve known about the benefits of essential oils for quite awhile, but until recently I’ve not had much experience with them.  I explained in my Drug Free post that my mom raised us on natural remedies and we very very rarely sought medical advice from conventional doctors.  Her focus was mostly on homeopathic and herbal remedies in conjunction with vitamins and minerals, so my exposure to essential oils didn’t really come about until I was more or less on my own with my personal health care.  Honestly, I’m not entirely sure when I really started looking into it… But I know it peaked once I started massage school in 2008 and I was around more people who knew them and used them.  I had heard of how beneficial they were, but never really explored them until my training in massage therapy.  Naturally that would come from using oils on the skin in my practice, but I also learned about them in conversation about, of course, alternative and natural healing remedies (since a lot of my classmates shared that interest! Ah it was refreshing being at that school…).  I do remember the first oil I started using in daily life, and that was lavender.  I used it for everything – healing cuts or scrapes or any kind of open wound, healing skin infections, taking the itch out of bug bites (and healing them, too), healing and easing burns, you name it.  And it worked!  I pretty much quit using Neosporin or anti-itch creams or anything like that – lavender was doing the trick!  Tea tree oil was the next one, but I couldn’t stand the smell… its anti-infectious properties were pretty powerful though, so I’d keep it on hand if I felt I needed a step up from lavender.  Peppermint and eucalyptus were two more that I added to my “medicine cabinet” – me with my allergies and Justin with his seasonal sinus infections, those two became pretty helpful in those unwelcome situations!  We would boil water and add a few drops of each to it, then put a towel over our heads to kind of create a tent around us and the water and create a little mini sauna to breathe in the steam.  Doing that a few times a day for a couple days definitely helped!

Earlier this year (2012) I got involved with Young Living Essential Oils and learned more about Therapeutic Grade Essential Oils and even more about the healing properties of oils and the different kinds that are available.  I’ve been impressed with Young Living – the fact that they organically grow and harvest their own plants, the rigorous process they go through to maintain the plant’s healing properties as they extract the oils, and the purity of the oils, are just a few features I really like about the company.

But I’m not writing this to try to make a sales pitch – I just want to share my experiences and newfound knowledge about yet another excellent method of natural healing!

I had done a little research on lavender, so allow me to share: its healing properties were first discovered by French scientist René Gattefossé when he severely burned his arm in a laboratory accident.  He found that applying lavender not only took the pain away, but it promoted tissue regeneration and sped up the wound healing.  Lavender oil is antiseptic, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, and analgesic, just to name a few of its wonderful properties.  Turns out it’s also a great bug repellant! Citronella is too, and over the summer I combined the two oils with coconut oil and applied it to Harlee’s skin, and lo and behold it worked!  If he DID get bit (which was usually due to me missing a spot or forgetting to put it on) I’d just put lavender on the bite straight and it’d be gone within a day.  Great stuff!  Harlee’s definitely no stranger to lavender at this point – anytime he gets a cut or a scrape (and what toddler doesn’t?) guess what Mom reaches for immediately?  No Neosporin for this little guy!  (Did you know that people who repeatedly use Neosporin can develop a contact dermatitis, which is a poison ivy-like reaction?)  I generally like to avoid products with petroleum jelly in them anyway (Neosporin lists white petrolatum as an inactive ingredient).  It’s derived from crude oil (as is the stuff that powers our cars and plastic bags are made of), which you probably don’t want on your skin, but if that’s not enough, it clogs the pores, preventing the skin from being able to breathe, and can therefore lead to premature aging of the skin, among other things (think about what’s in your makeup, ladies!  See why more “natural” based cosmetics like Bare Minerals are on the rise lately?).  For more information on that topic, click here.

I got off-topic there, so getting back to the topic at hand, allow me to share more about another wonderful oil – Peppermint!  Just breathing it in lets you know it’s wonderful for the sinuses.  That and eucalyptus, but eucalyptus has a very strong aroma that not many people care for, which makes peppermint a great fall-back (but if you do like eucalyptus and have sinus issues, I highly recommend it!!).  I already mentioned dripping it into boiling water and breathing in the steam, but I now have some great suggestions for the kiddos too!  Poor Mr. Harlee got a runny nose not long ago (but what kid doesn’t, right? ‘Tis the season, after all!) and I rubbed it on his feet at night (the pores on the soles of your feet are some of the largest in your body, so usually anything applied to the feet can affect you internally).  His symptoms eased up quicker than I could have imagined!  Upon more researching I discovered that peppermint is also excellent for digestive issues, and I read of some people mixing it with coconut oil and rubbing it on their belly to easy stomachaches.  I got to use Justin as my guinea pig for that one – he had some indigestion and I applied the peppermint/coconut oil mix to his abdomen and within the hour he said the pain had eased up.  Sweet!  I now have an option for Harlee in case he ever gets tummy troubles!  One more great use for peppermint that I’ve found, too, is putting a drop of it in a spoonful of honey and swallowing it to soothe a sore throat.  Works like magic!

Wait, wait, hold the phone – you can swallow the oils?  Well, this is why I went with Young Living oils – the Therapeutic Grade label that they carry means that they’re pure enough to be safe for consumption (although you should still use caution – they’re pretty powerful in their own way, and the labels say which ones aren’t recommended for consumption or which ones should be diluted due to the nature of the plant).  The oil brands you find that are labeled “For aromatherapy use only” usually means they have additives in them to help stretch them out a bit and therefore make them less expensive.  But I’d rather spend a little extra if it means I’m avoiding potentially harmful chemicals and I’m getting the highest quality and potency of the oil.

Last, but not least, I like to use essential oils for immune system health for all of us at home, normally applied to the feet as I mentioned above but also diffused in my oil diffuser/humidifier so we can breathe in their healing properties.  There are quite a few oils that have strong properties such as antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, and a whole host of other qualities that are good for our health.  Fortunately Young Living made life easier by offering Thieves – an oil blend of clove, lemon, cinnamon, eucalyptus, and rosemary – clove being one of the most antimicrobial, antiseptic, antifungal, antiviral, and anti-infectious of all essential oils.  I like the story of the history behind this oil blend too – legend has it that a group of 15^th century thieves rubbed these oils on themselves to avoid contracting the plague while they robbed the bodies of the dead and dying.  The thieves were forced to tell what their secret was in exchange for a more lenient punishment.  Now that’s power!  I’ll rub a drop of this on the soles of Harlee’s feet at night and, knock on wood, in conjunction with everything else I’ve been doing like the probiotics I mentioned in a previous post, he’s been pretty healthy!  Another great thing about the Thieves oil is that it has a numbing sensation (that we don’t feel on our palms or soles, fortunately), and diluted in coconut oil it’s really effective for teething!  So effective, in fact, that Harlee stops crying within SECONDS of having it rubbed on his gums.  And we’re killing two birds with one stone, with all the great healing properties this oil blend carries!  Way better than Oragel, if you asked me, which numbs not only the mouth but the throat too, which can lead to choking or inhaling saliva.

The benefits of Thieves doesn't stop there.  Harlee and I both have been dealing with this persistent cough that won't leave us alone.  I finally mixed a drop of Thieves with some almond butter hand cream (Burt's Bees) and rubbed it all over my chest and throat, and Harlee's too.  Wow, ever since I started doing that, it's cut my coughing in half, if not more, and Harlee's too!  Finally some relief!

Another great one for not only immune health but general health is lemon oil.  I love the research on this, done by Jean Valnet, MD.  This showed that vaporized lemon oil can kill meningococcus bacteria in 15 minutes, typhoid bacilli in one hour, staphylococcus in two hours, and pneumococcus within three hours.  This research also shows that even a 0.2% solution of lemon oil can kill diphtheria bacteria in 20 minutes and inactivate tuberculosis bacteria.  Wow, sign me up!  I need to just diffuse this every day and night!  I do actually put a few drops in my bottled water, not only to take advantage of its great health benefits, but to add a little flavor too!  It’s a natural antidepressant too.  Hmm… come to think of it… I did start adding lemon to my water around the time of my biggest shift in the healing process of my postpartum depression… Perhaps there’s a correlation?

Essential oils have been used for thousands of years.  I tried doing research on the origination of it, but it seems as though it can’t exactly be tracked – the history of their use goes back to ancient China, India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, just to name a few.  But I did notice that in all the history I’ve read, essential oils have been used for their medicinal properties, not just because they smell nice!  Although I don’t want to discredit aroma – breathing in these oils can definitely offer healing benefits as well, not just physically but mentally and emotionally too.  Take Frankincense, for instance – it stimulates the limbic region of the brain, the center of emotions, and can elevate the mind and help overcome stress and despair.  Sandalwood is another popular one, especially in incense – it stimulates the pineal gland as well as the limbic region of the brain and can help remove negative programming in the cells.

Hopefully that wasn’t too much information overload for you!  Trust me, there’s more where that came from, and I’m excited to learn more as I go along!  Isn’t Mother Earth incredible?  I am just in awe at the healing capabilities she possesses.  She definitely does not get the respect she deserves.

I’m sure I’ll post more about essential oils in the future, but for now that’s the most prominent information that I have.  I hope you enjoyed it and learned something new today!