When you get sick do you fight it no matter what or do you realign your approach to health? After spending seven days with a virus taking my nose, throat and then my lungs I am learning that it may be easier to get well and a lot less frustrating to be sick if I stop fighting and start realigning.
    When the first tickle hits my throat and the pressure enters my head I take out the Mucinex, neti pot, and fluids and head to work. Three days in, I realize fighting isn’t working. I am getting worse and concentrating on how yucky I feel is preventing me from getting the benefits rest can give.
    I switch gears and think about how my throat feeling as if it is full of shattered glass gives me the most infinitesimally small understanding of what my Dad’s throat is going through. I instantly become beyond grateful for the pain in my throat and realize the more grateful I become the less it hurts. Gratitude takes my pain from an 8 of swallowing broken glass to a 3 that says if this is worse in the morning it’s off to the doctor.
    The next morning I think hmm maybe gratitude and medicine are all I need. I go to work sure that my body will heal. Friday hits and a cough settles into my lungs. I ramp up my homeopathic efforts and decide to give rest more of a chance to come to my rescue. No work for me today. I need to see what my kitchen can do to help me heal.
    My first Google search brings me to Dr. Michael Gregor M.D., speaker at the Conference on World Affairs, the National Institutes of Health, and the International Bird Flu Summit; Contributor on The Dr. Oz Show and the US Humane Society’s Director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture’s talk about a Japanese study that proves less than one teaspoon of raw kale can quadruple our white blood cells’ ability to create antibodies and cooked kale increases antibody production even more.
    A few more searches and I created the yummiest kale, spinach, broccoli, black bean, onion, garlic, ginger, and turmeric spiced miso soup. I juiced two liters of parsley, carrots, cilantro, apples, cucumber, and sweet potato, and make a tea tonic of ginger, lemon, grapefruit and Braggs apple cider vinegar to drink alone and add to hot teas. I am good to go and the home remedies and Mucinex seem to do their thing.
    No miracle cure, but I have till Monday to get well. Unfortunately Monday brings me to the doctor’s office with scary looking throat and lungs that are puffier than Friday. Not one to prescribe antibiotics until tests prove you need them my doctor runs some tests then sends me home to wait and see if I need antibiotics or to let the virus run what he says will be an 18 day course.
    Who has 18 days? I need to find a way to get healthy faster than that. Time to create a natural broad-spectrum antibiotic, antimicrobial, antifungal, and anti-inflammatory cocktail of raw organic pressed garlic, ginger, turmeric root, and honey. This is not my yummy soup, juice, teas or tonic. This tastes yucky and yet I’m taking a teaspoon every hour because the experts say it works in less than 48 hours.
    One day in, my cough is subsiding, my sinuses are less puffy and I have a dim hope that my throat will catch up if it gets more help. Time to ramp up the gargling, add my go-to Thai spicy vegetable soup, and Dr. Oz’s Microbial Silver spray, goldenseal root, and Echinacea tea to my throat’s scary party.
    Four hours into my first homeopathic free for all and I can say I see why people choose this route. Giving my body things that add to health vs. trying to kill everything or giving everyone around me the opportunity to feel miserable is making my recovery far easier to swallow even when what I am swallowing tastes really yucky.
    I can’t wait to hear about your remedies, especially if they taste good! Please give me a ring at 781-331-5308, email me at kristan@mooneytunco.com, or join the conversation on the Lets Chat Blog at www.nomispublications.com.