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Germs are everywhere and the best thing you can do is boost your immune system so that your body has the means to fight off the bad ones. The best way to do this is to eat healthy in general. While it’s important to eat healthy all the time, during direct exposure of or during an illness, it’s especially important. In this post I will share my immune-boosting go-to’s. I use these cold and flu remedies both as preventatives, and as treatment to fight the illness.
Sickness has been all around me lately. I’m a first year school teacher, working with pre-kindergarten students. These sweet babies are 4 and 5 years old so they are still learning about hygiene, how to blow and wipe their noses, to cover their coughs and sneezes, and to wash hands if they cover their cough with their hand! I’m constantly exposed to various infections and bodily fluids, so it is not surprising that I was sick the week before last. But what may be surprising to some is that it was my first cold of the school season. I made it 5 months without getting sick. My healthy streak was actually broken in the previous month when I dealt with a stomach bug– one of my students had diarrhea and guess who had to clean the child, chair, floor, and bathroom?? The parents were called, and they shared that the child was in the hospital the night before for diarrhea and vomiting. In between being at school the day before, and that current day, the child was in the hospital. And they still brought the child to school. Several more children got sick and another was hospitalized because they couldn’t keep any fluids down.
Side note– My dear readers, do not be those people. If your kid is experiencing diarrhea and vomiting, sacrifice one of your own sick days and let your babies rest when they’re sick. That child should have been recovering at home, rather than at school pushing through and spreading the virus.
All that to say, I am psychotic about sickness and germs, but not in the way that you would imagine a germ freak to be. For instance, I don’t use hand sanitizer. I actually do my best to avoid it because using it on your hands kills EVERYTHING, both good and bad. I want to keep my healthy bacteria so I prefer to wash my hands over using sanitizer. Obviously when out in public, I can’t control whether the soap in the bathroom is antibacterial, but the hand soap that I use at home is not antibacterial. All I want is to wash the germs away, not obliterate everything on my hands and wrists. I am psychotic about prevention, and when I do get sick, I’m psychotic about eradicating it.
Before sharing my immune-boosting tricks, I want to give this disclaimer– I am not a doctor. I am just a hippie gal sharing advice for managing common illnesses at home. If you have any concerns about symptoms, go see a doctor for advice. I personally do my best to avoid the visits that turn out to be me paying a health professional to tell me to hydrate and rest. Pre-COVID I remember going in after a few days of coughing and having a runny nose because my mucus had color to it, and the NP told me that color alone doesn’t necessarily mean I need antibiotics, and that I just needed to rest and drink lots of fluids. I paid about $90 for that visit.
Bone Broth
Bone broth is my #1 go-to for boosting my immune system. As a child, Campbell’s chicken noodle soup provided comfort in times of sickness, but after looking at the ingredient list as an adult, I gave that up. Sulfate, MSG, sugar– no thank you! Now I have access to quality bone broth at the grocery store that I can just warm up and sip on. Bone broth is stock that it made from simmering bones (hello, collagen!). It can have a strong taste and honestly it took me a year to acclimate to the taste of Kettle & Fire’s chicken bone broth as is. BUT now there’s another brand of broth that tastes like perfection and I think it might be better quality because the label specifies “pasture-raised regenerative chicken bone broth.”
Check out FOND’s chicken bone broth with lemon and garlic. I also love that it comes in a glass jar. Kettle & Fire was my first favorite brand, but it only specifies “free-range chicken bones.” Free-range is good, but not best. On the flipside, their beef broth is grass-fed and grass-finished while FOND’s beef broth is grass-fed, but does not specify grass-finished. But honestly, this is a case where the cliche don’t let perfect be the enemy of good comes into play. They’re both great brands and if you have access to them at your local grocery store, they’re much better than conventional brands like Swanson and College In.
Kettle & Fire Chicken Broth (free-range)
Kettle & Fire Beef Broth (grass-fed and -finished)
FOND’s Pasure-Raised Chicken Bone Broth
FOND’s Grassfed Regenerative Beef Broth
Garlic
This is my husband’s least favorite of my preventatives and remedies because after eating RAW garlic, I smell like a garlic clove. But I swear by its benefits and we’ve all heard about garlic’s health properties as an old wive’s tale. Turns out that there is now some scientific evidence to support its benefits! I first learned about it from this article I read years ago at Mind Body Green. There’s an enzyme in raw garlic that is activated after it is cut open and sits for at least 20 minutes. Upon activation, allicin is produced and this is what gives garlic its antiviral and antibacterial properties. It can help prevent sickness, and also help reduce the severity of sickness. Here’s the study on its “potential” therapeutic effects that is cited in the MBG article. The author of the article gives a 3-ingredient recipe for garlic toast, but since bread is not a part of my regular diet, I just swallow the minced garlic with a spoonful of honey, or with a swig of water. It’s an easy way to get it down without dealing with the spice of garlic when bitten into. It’s important to buy fresh cloves from the store because pre-minced garlic and garlic powder no longer possess allicin.
Elderberry Syrup
I’ve been drinking elderberry syrup since I was a child. It’s an immune booster that’s especially helpful during “cold and flu season” when our defenses are down during the period of less sun exposure (lack of vitamin D) and increase of sweets during the holidays (sugar suppresses our immune systems!!). Apparently it’s easy to make your own elderberry syrup in an Instant Pot, but I’ve never made it from scratch. It’s kind of expensive, so I could see myself wanting to make it myself if I had a large family but right now it’s just me and my husband so no biggie here shelling out $30ish for a 5 or 8oz bottle. Also, it wasn’t until maybe in the past 5 years that I’ve started to see Elderberry syrup and gummies in stores like Sam’s Club and CVS!! I’m so happy that this natural remedy is being sold in regular stores now, as opposed to just specialty health food stores. The three brands of syrup that I buy are from Gaia Herbs, Nature’s Answer, and Nature’s Way.
Pukka Tea
Pukka is my favorite brand of tea. I drink their Cleanse blend during allergy season. Nettle leaf is anti-inflammatory so it helps reduce allergy symptoms like sneezing and itching. Peppermint contains menthol that can act as a pain reliever for headaches, and being that it is antibacterial, antiviral, anti-inflammatory, it can help relieve clogged sinuses due to allergies, cold, and flu viruses. When I drink this tea daily, I am fine without taking antihistamines since my allergy symptoms are minimal in the first place. This tea was also soothing to me during my sickness last week. Another blend I enjoyed while sick was their Wellness Support, which uses elderberry and echinacea as the stars of the show. When coming down with something, I’m a sucker for anything with elderberry in it, including those insanely expensive wellness juice shots in the grocery store’s produce section.
Throat Coat
Once my body has been taken over by sickness, I add the following two products into the mix from Throat Coat. The original Throat Coat tea from Traditional Medicinals has been my go-to for the past 18 years. If you have a sore throat either from infection or irritation, this stuff provides relief and supports immune health as it contains several herbs that specifically support throat health. A few years ago, I saw that they now have cough drops!! There’s even a blend that is specific for a sore throat. Prior to these lozenges, I was all about Ricola and was suffering from those drops cutting the roof of my mouth. I haven’t had that problem with Throat Coat, and I like the taste better. Sweet Orange Fennel is my personal favorite, which is what I linked to.
These are all the things I do in addition to drinking lots of water and eating lots of protein! If you have any home remedies you’d like to share, let me know in the comments!