Home Remedies for Cold & Flu Season

 

Home remedies are like the gateway drug of herbal medicine.

Everybody’s got a grandma, crazy auntie, or outspoken Facebook friend with a cold remedy or two to share. Sometimes they sound downright crazy. Sometimes they work—and sometimes they don’t.

But you, dear reader, can do better than this hit-or-miss, urban legend, “my friend’s cousin’s facebook friend suggested I take echinacea/goldenseal” style of folk herbalism.

You can do much, much better.

You can learn to reliably identify the remedy that matches the PERSON who’s suffering rather than grasping at remedies without any rationale or strategy. That’s what I’m going to teach you today.

 

How to Be a Remedy Rockstar

With just a little herbal knowledge, you can dramatically increase your rate of home remedy success. You can help yourself, your family, and your friends get through this year’s cold & flu season with a lot less suffering. (And it promises to be a pretty terrible flu season, according to the CDC. Incidentally, if you’re part of a vulnerable population or do a lot of work with the general public, it’s really worth talking to your doctors about a flu shot.)

The concepts I’m going to teach you today will help you figure out which remedies to use for the particular type of cold or flu you’re dealing with, and which remedies to use at each phase of the illness.

 

Before You Get Sick

Legally, I can’t tell you that there are herbal remedies or supplements that can prevent cold & flu.

What I can tell you is this; there are herbal remedies, foods, supplements and lifestyle practices that support your body’s natural defenses against illness. Even though it’s clunky, this language better captures the true nature of how natural medicine works. We’re not sending the herbs to do battle with viruses & bacteria. Your immune system is the most badass germ-killing brigade on the planet; the herbs simply help it to function at its best while patching up constitutional weaknesses that might otherwise leave you vulnerable.

From the perspective of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the practice of building strength and vitality in the body is called tonification. As usual, tonic therapies must be tailored to the individual. Still, there are a few basic principles of tonification that everyone can apply during the winter months, and a few tonic herbs that may be worth considering.

 

Nourish Water & Yin

Winter is the season of the Water Element, which is associated with the Kidney/Adrenals. TCM considers the Kidney Qi to be your deepest and most precious inner resource. Winter is the time of year when you can either nourish this precious lifeforce energy or squander it at an alarming rate. It is also the most Yin time of the year, making it the ideal time to reflect, turn inward, and rest. If you abuse yourself during the Winter months, not only will you be more vulnerable to colds & flu, but you’ll also set yourself up for problems all year long.

Here are some ways to nourish your Water element and protect your Yin to keep your body strong:

• Eat small amounts of naturally salty foods like seaweeds, miso paste, & salt fermented vegetables each day.
• Get plenty of sleep each night. Go to bed before 11pm if at all possible!
• Ensure that your food is mineral rich. Choose organic whenever possible & supplement with nettle infusions if you like.
• Spend time reading, journaling, and having good conversations. Reflect on what matters to you.
• Moderate your exercise regime. Focus on consistency and enjoyment rather than on pushing yourself to the max.
• Cook tonic herbs like Astragalus & Eleutherococcus into your food. Check this post for a how-to and this one for a chai recipe that’s warming and tonifying.
• Get plenty of sleep! Really!

 

Elderberry vs. The Flu

Black Elderberries (Sambucus nigra) have a long history of traditional use during flu season both to help support the body in fighting off the flu virus whether a person is already sick or simply hoping not to get sick. An effective (and extremely yummy) preparation is elderberry syrup, which you can make yourself with dried elderberries or purchase at any health food store. Now there’s even scientific research to back up the traditional use, including new research that shows elderberry extract has the ability to bind to the Swine Flu virus (H1N1) and prevent it from infecting host cells. This is a great remedy to take throughout flu season and to have on-hand in case you or someone you love does get hit with the flu this year.

 

When You Feel A Cold Coming On

First you’ve got to figure out—are you dealing with a “hot cold” or a “cold cold?” This is the missing key to helping you choose the right remedies that will really work.

Hot Colds:

• Come on suddenly—and strongly
• Lots of mucus with a green or yellow color, possibly blood-streaked
• Tendency to feel hot and run a fever
• Fast & bounding radial pulse
• Thirst and preference for cold drinks

Cold Colds

• Creep up more slowly
• Mucus tends to be clear, white, and runny
• Tendency to feel chilled with no fever or a low grade fever
• Deep radial pulse
• Preference for warm foods and drinks

If you have a “Hot” Cold….

 

• At the first sign of a hot cold, try to sweat it out with cooling diaphoretics. A wonderful formula of cooling diaphoretics is peppermint and elderflower (equal parts.) Drink at least a quart of this as a hot tea, dress in layers, and climb under the covers. You want to get your body to sweat. It’s like inducing the experience of when a fever “breaks.”

• If a day or night of sweating it out doesn’t work, progress to a strongly cooling remedy. Yin Chao is a wonderful Traditional Chinese Medicine formula that’s perfect for hot colds. Echinacea is very cooling and is best applied to hot colds. Other cold herbs like andrographis, usnea, and oregon grape can also be used.

• Avoid remedies made with very hot herbs like garlic, dried ginger, and cayenne pepper.

• If you feel drawn to fast on juices, you may. Otherwise, eat according to your appetite choosing simple foods like rice congee, lentil soup, and cooked grains.

 

If you have a “Cold” Cold….

 

• At the first sign of a cold cold, try to sweat it out with warming diaphoretics. These include thyme, ginger, boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum), sage, osha, and yarrow. You can use any of these individually or in combination with one-another. Just as with a hot cold, use large amounts of these diaphoretics and wrap yourself up in lots of layers and blankets so that you can “sweat it out.”

• If a day or night of sweating it out doesn’t work, progress to some warming remedies. This is where the classic combination of garlic and ginger really shines. You can smash a garlic glove with the flat side of your knife, put it in a teacup, then cover it with boiling water. Cover with a plate and let steep for 20 minutes. Add honey if you have a sore throat. You could also simmer garlic and ginger together, add miso paste, and consume up to two quarts over the course of the day.

• Avoid cooling remedies like Echinancea, Andrographis, Oregon Grape/Goldenseal, and Yin Chao.

• If you feel drawn to fast, you can fast on the garlic/ginger miso soup that I mentioned above. Avoid juices (yes, even green juice!) because they are too cooling for you right now. If you’re not drawn to fast, eat a moderate diet according to your appetite. Kitcharee is wonderful for recovering from this type of cold!

 

If the Cold Moves into Your Chest…

 

If the cold seems to mostly resolve but you’re left with heaviness in your chest, a deep rumbling cough, and a cough that’s not productive (meaning that you cough and cough but nothing comes up) you want to use herbs that will break up that congestion, help you cough up the gunk, and support your body in overcoming the infection.

Herbal expectorants help you cough up the gunk. Some nice ones include anise seeds, garlic, eucalyptus, and thyme. Large doses of raw garlic (or raw garlic tea made by covering a smashed clove with hot water) is my favorite approach for chest congestion.

If you have an unproductive, dry, irritated cough that’s preventing you from sleeping, try a moistening antitussive. Slippery elm lozenges, mullein leaf tea, licorice root tea, a tablespoon of honey, and marshmallow infusion are all good choices.

Remember: Treat the Person not the Illness

The key to becoming a home remedy rockstar is to learn to think like an herbalist. Match your herbs & remedies to the person you’re helping. If they tell you they have a cold, that’s only the beginning of the discussion. Ask them about their symptoms. Figure out if it’s a hot cold or a cold cold. Ask them about their likes and dislikes. (Someone who hates licorice or gets heartburn from raw garlic should use different herbs!) Ask them if they’ll really make their teas and soups or if they need a remedy in tablet form in order to take it often enough.

You’ll be amazed at how much more effective your home remedies are with just a little bit of customization.

Wishing you a happy & healthy winter,

Melanie

 

p.s. If you like this post, please use it, pass it on, and let me know what works for you and what doesn’t! Feel free to share this post with your home remedy-loving friends & family, too. We can all contribute to helping herbal medicine return to the mainstream by sharing really good information and effective remedies.