Using Nature’s Secrets to Look Great and Feel Terrific, Stay young, slim, strong, and energetic – Naturally
This year’s cold and flu season threatens to outdo last year’s sore throat, cough, fever, and chronic asthma, which became so widespread we nicknamed it The Mother of All Colds. Now is the time to protect yourself and family from catching and spreading it. Psychic Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) and traditional Asian herbal doctors agree: Clean up your act by eliminating congestion and germs, and you are safer from colds and flu. Cayce recommended fasting, purging, and sweating treatments to reduce excess mucus and improve breathing and digestion. These may be weakening for people who are run-down, tired, and stressed. However a few adjustments in your diet and herbs can accomplish similar protection.
Diet for Protection
Avoid excess sweet and rich, gooey foods because they increase mucus congestion and trouble digestion and energy. Increase fresh fruits and vegetables. They are high in helpful antioxidants and nutrients. Fish oil, flax seed oil, and hemp oil capsules are sources of Omega oils that help regulate circulation and reduce impurities. Get some vitamin D either by looking toward the sun for 15 minutes daily for from vitamin D 3 capsules, cod liver oil capsules or cooked hijiki seaweed salads. Vitamin D enhances immunity for all sorts of illness, from cancer to depression, and increases calcium absorption, which is normally lower during cold, dark winter months.
Deep-cleansing and detoxifying herbs reduce your chances of becoming sick. Take them to prevent a cold or flu. If you use antibiotic herbs, add daily capsules of acidophilus. Useful herbs for prevention of colds and flu reduce inflammation and toxins. They include neem, guggul and tulsi. In India, the neem tree is known as “Divine Tree,” “Heal All,” “Nature’s Drugstore,” “Village Pharmacy” and “Panacea for all diseases.” Products made from neem have proven medicinal properties, including anthelmintic, antifungal, antidiabetic, antibacterial, antiviral, anti-infertility, and sedative. It is considered a major component in Ayurvedic medicine and is particularly prescribed for skin disease. See my article at www.asianhealthsecrets.com “Herbal Tonics that protect against Poisons.”
Increase Immunity
Increase your natural immunity to colds, flu, and allergies with a powerful tonic herb astragalus, available in health food stores and in Chinatown. If you use the raw herb, simmer a handful of sliced astragalus in two cups of water for 30 minutes and drink it warm or cool between meals. It increases T cells, our body’s immune system; increases energy, and normalizes sweating reducing night sweats.
Other useful food/herbal products that boost immunity to help prevent exhaustion and reduce your chances of catching cold include medicinal mushrooms. Use them during allergy and cold season. But if you catch the flu, you will need stronger protection. From India, available in East Indian groceries and online is amla powder and capsules. It is a wild sour cherry that is extremely high in vitamin C. Add 1/4 tsp of the powder to a cup of tea.
Early Symptoms
For sore throat, chills or feverish weakness with or without cough:
Chuan Xin Lian pills a combination of dandelion and two antibiotic herbs andrographis and isatis. It works for reducing pain and swelling. Take 2 – 5 Chuan Xin Lian pills along with 3-5 pills of Gan Mao Ling a combination of cooling antibiotic herbs including honeysuckle flower. Gan Mao Ling helps you sweat out a cold and kills germs. If your tongue is coated with thick grey or white coating add homeopathic Nat. Mur. 6x to thin the mucus.
If you have fever with or without chills, weakness, shortness of breath, fatigue, muscle soreness, and other early signs of infection, oil of oregano capsules taken with meals will kill germs and bring your vitality back fast. Be careful to include acidophilus or eat yogurt to protect your digestion when using antibiotic herbs.
Later Symptoms
If you can’t breathe, feel very short of breath and weak various Chinese asthma pills will help. For thick yellow phlegm use Crocodile Bile Asthma Pills inexpensive herbal pills from Chinatown. For acute and chronic bronchitis, asthma, chronic cough with wheezing and chest pain from smoking, air pollution or The Mother of All Colds use Clear Air pills from Health Concerns. Clear Air can be combined with western medicines for pneumonia and TB. Ask your pharmacist to order pills from Health Concerns or call them at 1 800 233 9355 and use my name LETHA as a password.
Homeopathic Remedies
Homeopathic remedies, available in most pharmacies and health food stores, are fast-working and easy to use. Just melt the recommended dose under your tongue between meals. Homeopathic gelsemium 30C work well for stressed, exhausted people who tend to become sick because of anxiety or depression. It does not kill germs but eases muscle aches and fatigue. It brightens your mood. If you develop a sudden high fever and headache or extreme emotional upset that makes you feel unglued, Homeopathic aconite 30C may help you to regain balance. Usually one or two doses are enough to calm and cool those symptoms.
Take the opportunity to rest, regroup, and reconnect with your inner strength. At the first sign of a cold–stiffness, sore throat, or chills–Chinese herbalists recommend pills such as Gan Mao Ling, which contain antibiotic herbs honeysuckle flower and forsythia bark to kill germs and reestablish vitality. Ridding the body of impurities increases mental clarity and optimism. Rest and quiet are important ways to protect resilience.
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Hi Letha – what do you know about DRY FASTING? In light of the cold season, and for general health, I’ve always read that we don’t drink enough water, and that dehydration causes numerous ills (i.e. that book Your Body’s Many Cries for Water). Yet I just read that a Russian study (a Sergey Filonov) advocates dry fasting for quick healing! The theory is that dehydration causes competition between healthy cells and pathological organisms for water… that inflammation cannot survive without water. A wet environment is ideal for the proliferation of bad bacteria, viruses, and worms – water shorgage is as devastating as fire for them. All dead or dying tissues will be expelled from the body.
Don’t the kidneys need water? I always thought the body needed water to flush out toxins, not the opposite. I’m always afraid that I don’t drink enough, and see the results in dry skin, hair, and stools.
You are the voice of reason, please clarify ~
Best,
Juni
Hi Letha,
I’ve been experiencing shortness of breath lately as well as fluid in the ear. The shortness of breath is very unusual for me as I am generally in good health. My dad was diagnosed with lung cancer ( he didn’t smoke) in March (that’s when this started, it comes and goes) . He passed away in September and I’ve noticed it a little more lately, especially when I eat sugar and cheese. This frustrates me which seems to make it worse. Should I take the gelsium or the aconite? I also suffer from sinus issues especially with the weather the way it’s been…
Thank you,
Karen
Hi Juni
You should not generalize. See where (what part of the body) the symptoms are imbalanced.
Some Asian doctors advocate allowing a fever to kill germs – they encourage fevers unless they get too high and last too long. But I have not heard them advocate dehydration. In fact in India – where they might encourage a fever, they fast on green coconut juice – high in minerals and water.
I agree with you that fluids are necessary to help prevent colds/flu and flush the kidney.
But excess phlegm not just water can maintain worms and parasites. The locations are different.
Parasites are in the colon not lungs, nose, sinus.
Dry cough and dry throat can encourage strept throat infections. ie., Cold dry weather not just exposure to people who are sick.
I would think a dry fast would be too harmful for weak people with poor digestion – many of our elderly health clients.
They already suffer from dehyration – especially if they are constipated or have a dry cough.
See the symptoms.
If there is dryness, redness, thick phlegm then you need to add cooling moistening foods and herbs like
asparagus and oatmeal — for dry cough and lungs. Not for parasites. For them you need neem and other drying, detoxifying herbs.
Right now, I am using neem and Giloy capsules from Baidyanath an Indian company to reduce phlegm from parasites and dampness in general. That way if I catch cold/flu I will be less troubled by phlegmy cough. A dry fast could be very uncomfortable for anyone who suffered from constipation or dryness anywhere in the body.
Instead of a dry fast, why not a sauna or some other way to temporarily comfortably increase sweating?
Hi Karen
Sorry to hear about losing your Dad. Do not underestimate the weakening power of grief and loss. You ought to take something natural to help you recover your breath and vitality. Homeopathic pulsatilla 30C may be better for you than aconite. Pulsatilla works for shortness of breath, feeling shut in, sadness and water retention in the body.
Think of homeopathic aconite only for very high sudden fevers and fears.
Gelsemium may work if you feel anxious or very worried. It works for exhaustion.
Take a moment to feel your feelings. That can help you decide what to choose.
Thick phlegm and sadness – pulsatilla
exhaustion, nervousness – gelsemium
panic –aconite.
Only One will be the right one.
best, L.
I would like to thank you for an answer you wrote to a young lady.
For the first time in decades I actually got ill, but I believe that was my fault.
I walked in on some construction being done in my home for dry rot and got a mouthful of the dust and from that moment I began to cough. About three months later I got Pneumonia which I recovered from very quickly but was left what the doctor thought was either asthma, copd or something. All they wanted me to do is take steroids, advair and albuterol which I had to take in order to breath and they do work but they are very dangerous. The very first line in the advair paper that come with each diskus is “This product can cause death by asthma” so I began an intense reasearch on the internet.
At that point I refused to take anymore and tried anything that said it was for lungs. when I read the advice you gave the young lady. I have now astonished everyone because I now have no symptoms at all.
You were speaking about balancing Kapha and Pitta and how Guggulu, Ashwaganda, Tulsi (Holy Basil) and Shilajeet would help and boy did they ever. Not more than a few days after I began taking them everything changed. No more mucus, wheezing and coughing. I am now back to my walking and feel as healthy as I have ever felt. You have made me a real believer in Ayuravedic medicine
thank you, thank you, thank you.
Stan
Thanks Stanley.
Glad to hear you are doing well. The herbs you mention have other uses as well – not just improvement of asthma.
You can use them long term.
Ashwagandha works well for fatigue and backache. It combines well with Shilajet capsules.
Ashwagandha strengthens muscles, shilajet is moistening. Together they rejuvenate lower back, legs, sexuality, and general vitality like a tonic. They will also improve memory and sharpen the senses. Asian tonic herbs do many things at once. That’s why they are so valuable and help us adapt to stress.
Guggul reduces cholesterol and helps prevent tumors.
Now I am using some bitter cleansing herbs – neem (antibacterial, antiviral) and giloy (Guduchi) which enhances immunity in order to help prevent flu.
If you catch a cold or flu stop taking ashwagandha and shilajet. They are good tonics for longterm use. BUt fiu is an acute problem with fever. Such tonics are not useful for acute issues and fevers – just chronic weakness and exhaustion.
all best, Letha
I found your new letter so informative as I have had the “Mother of all colds”. The mucus and phlegm that is plaguing me now is unbearable. I clear my throat every few seconds and cannot break the thick mucus loose, and I have a dry cough from the drainage in my throat. I am taking Clear Air but it doesn’t seem to be helping. Can you recommend something else?
I really look forward to your news letters.
Thanks again…in advance.
Sally
Great Info. I think this is very interesting article
Kristin Yerby
I am happy to supply natural health and beauty information. You can link to my articles at my website.