Last week three of our children were sick (first time this year) so I thought I would share what has worked for us to help them recover and heal. We use a holistic or whole body approach.
First stop, chiropractor. Basically your spine is like the central intelligence agency of your body. Each vertebrae in your spine has nerves that "plug" into it and send signals to different parts of your body. If your spine has any subluxations, or twisted vertebrae, your body will not run properly because the nerve signal is being interrupted.
Our next go to is good bone broths and homemade chicken stocks. I always have them on hand in the fridge as part of our protocol for healthy teeth. This simple, easy recipe from The Healthy Home Economist on Potassium Broth would as be very beneficial to anyone try to recover from an illness or surgery.
1 part fresh lemon to 1 part raw honey + as much raw garlic or ginger as you or your kids can stand. I talk more about this here. We use garlic ear oil if ear pain is an issue. Garlic is a natural antibiotic that is much more effects that prescription antibiotics because it works synergistically as a whole plant rather than a single isolated antibiotic. Its main route of action is in it sulphur compound allicin. If we really need a boost we utilize Grapefruit Seed Extract. Stephen Harrod Buhner's book Herbal Antibiotics is a must read.
Fever! A fever is not to be fear unlike the medical establishment would have you believe. It is our bodies natural response to the invaders in our system. Most bacteria/viruses can not handle high heat so they are literally cooked to death when the body spikes a fever. When you reach for the bottle of fever reducer you are doing more harm than good. You are giving the bacteria a leg up by reducing your temperature to a level that they can readily reproduce in making an illness last much longer than it normally would. I am again going to direct you to The Healthy Home Economist because she wrote a very good, concise post here. If you have a child that is very uncomfortable a bit of diluted green tea can help. The small amount of caffeine can dilate the blood vessels just enough to bring comfort without compromising the healing aspects of a fever.
It is said that the ability to run a high fever is a sign of vitality and I can attest to that. My daughter will run temps of 103-104 and she still runs circles around us. She generally sleeps right through them waking healthy as though she had a perfectly normal night with no temperature.
Nourishing foods and probiotics: Your immune system is only has healthy as your gut. We all have on a daily basis, raw milk products, kombucha or water kefir and my husband takes extra probiotics because they promote flu vaccinations at his work and I don't want him bringing home the flu because of others shedding the virus. We don't vaccinate as vaccinating compromises the immune system.
And last but most important is rest. Your body needs downtime. The only reason you got sick in the first place is that your body was run down and your immune system was not running on all cylinders. Just because you get a "germ" in your body doesn't automatically mean you are going to get sick. Bacteria and viruses have to have the right medium to grow on in order to make someone sick. If you are eating lots of sugar and processed foods (or even just a little) you are compromising your immune system by destroying your gut health.
Last week three out of the four were sick. We got a new bucket of raw honey that is crystallized (oh so yummy!) and the kids had been allowed one to many spoonfuls. To a certain degree, sugar is sugar and the extra sugar weaken their gut health by feeding the bad flora and in turn weakened their immune system. We were around two different families dealing with two different illnesses that we picked up. They all had quick recoveries, 24 -48 hours. We ran temps in the 104 range, drank lots of water kefir to stay hydrated and kept blood glucose levels up and encouraged them to sleep a lot. We haven't been to a doctor for illness in 6 years and my oldest has had one round of prescription antibiotics when he was 18 months old before the stance on ear infections was to just wait it out.
People get sick. Its not inherently a bad thing. It's Gods way of building our immune systems improving our overall health. Are there those that haven't been sick in years? Yep, and coo-dos to them but I live with four kids who touch everything (an occasionally lick stuff! yuk!!) and we are bound to get sick. This is just what has worked best for our family to help us make a speedy recovery without the side effects of OTC or prescription drugs.
Very interesting. Our children are all grown up now and married. I was blessed to have natural, spontaneous births and breast fed all of them for a good long while. I did the best I could with what I knew (and could afford) at the time. The pool of information and support is much more robust now. How blessed you are!
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