Natural Tips for Fighting and Preventing a Cold this Winter Season

When the seasons change, it is very common & typical to see massive amounts of people coughing, sneezing, clearing their throats, etc. Everywhere. The workplace, the classroom, and your home! It is also common just to see people getting sick around the holidays; esp with the stress of holiday hustle & bustle. The first sign of a cold is usually a sore throat or pain in the back of the neck; if you don’t treat these symptoms immediately, there is usually no way to fight them from turning into something nastier!! Here are some natural tips for cold & flu season:

*Go get an Acupuncture treatment at your local clinic or private Acupuncturist immediately! The sooner the better. The practitioner will be able to give you Chinese herbal remedies & acupuncture to Kick it !

* Drink Peppermint tea. I love using peppermint essential oil because its SUPER concentrated & will cool down a sore throat/fever right away. 1 drop of peppermint oil is ALL YOU NEED… Add lemon & raw honey!

* Try to use a Neti Pot 1x a day if you are exposed to a lot of people & germs. This will clear out your sinus cavity and keep bacteria from clinging to your hairs in your nose.

* Homemade chicken stock or bone broth. Yes chicken soup works, the “Jewish penicillin”. There are many recipes on the web. Make sure you use organic, free- range chicken , adding scallions, & ginger (giving it extra immune boosting power).

* Use Young Livings Thieves products. They have spray, household cleaner, hand sanitizer, toothpaste, mouthwash, the Essential Oil and more. Thieves is a blend of clove, lemon, cinnamon bark, eucalyptus, and rosemary.  It kills 99.95% of airborne bacteria, viruses, and fungi. I would rub it on the bottoms of my feet, gargle with it, and diffuse it in an essential oils diffuser during cold season.

*If you do get sick, a great homemade cough syrup: (so much better than that chemical laden crap from the drugstore!!)

-1 drop of lemon Essential Oil

-1-2 drops of Thieves Essential Oil

-1 Drop of Frankincense

-1 drop of Peppermint

-1 teaspoon of honey

*to make a larger batch to put into a 6-8 oz glass jar, adjust to about 10 drops of lemon, 5 drops of Thieves, and however much you want of the Frankincense & peppermint 

Why Essential Oils?

I was recently speaking with a colleague of mine who is also an Acupuncturist. After hearing me explain various reasons why essential oils are amazing, wonderful for your health, blah blah.. she was still concerned because her own acupuncturist had told her not to ‘mess with them.’ In fact, even after our talk, she was even afraid to order them. I was shocked by this statement because never in my life had I heard such a thing, especially after becoming involved heavily, as I have been, in aromatherapy and using Young Living Essential Oils. Then, I stopped myself from replying in a negative way. Of course ! Not many people use THERAPEUTIC GRADE essential oils in their practices or at home,or even know what that phrase means.

Most essential oils you can purchase at your nearest health food store are fragrance grade, NOT THERAPEUTIC, at all. They smell good, like grandma’s apple pie smells good. But so does perfume. Would you drink it? Put it on your children & pets?  No. Most people have no idea what the difference is. And that’s okay! Just know if the price is cheap, cheap, cheap for the product you are buying, you can bet its not real. The healthcare & beauty product industry is a multi-billion dollar arena. The FDA does not regulate any personal hygiene products, cosmetics, etc. So ,really, companies can put whatever types of fillers & chemicals in their products and none of us would know the difference. Our skin, being our largest organ, ‘feeds.’ Feeds what…did you just say feeds?! Yes! Our body’s skin eats! You don’t put on your skin what you wouldn’t put in your mouth! Or let in build up in your Liver or lymphatic system! Young Living is actually working on changing this, so that there are standards for purity in the essential oil industry

That being said, most essential oils and their products are only really required to have 5% of the actual plant substance in the bottle. What is the other 95% you say? Synthetics, perfumes, byproducts, chemicals…ew…. It can smell like Lavender, but only actually contain 5% lavender in the bottle! Or have other products that make it smell more ‘lavndery.’ Companies do this because the products is cheaper to produce & they figure most people don’t know the difference anyway.  If you find Frankincense Essential Oil in the health food store that is $5 you can bet your butt its not real!! To call something an essential oil, 100% pure,etc. there needs to be a certain percentage of compounds. Even if it was synthesized in a lab to meet those compound requirements, it can still be called 100% pure…crazy huh!?

Young Living is the world leader in therapeutic grade essential oils and essential oil medicine. They have a process called “seed to seal” that ensures the quality of the seedling, planting process on rich non-toxic soil, correct harvesting, and distillation is 100% pure, organic, and most importantly scientifically accurate to get the most healing properties out of each drop. They grow, distill, and manufacture THEIR OWN oils.. they are not just brokers . They are one of the only Essential Oil companies in the world that will let their distributors & customers visit their farms & distilleries to see the whole process in action.

Anyways, that’s my spiel on that. Being a healthcare practitioner, I use them confidently on complete strangers, patients, and my own family knowing that they will heal not harm. Contact me if you want more information on this or how to order essential oils, I’d love to help you get the healing power of essential oils into your home!