Let me give you a bit of history on my experience with colds. For most of my life I have gone through cycles where I have spent weeks at a time being miserably sick with bad head colds, chest colds, sore throats, laryngitis, etc. I'm a teacher, so I have sick students coughing and sneezing on me all the time. And we teachers cannot take a week off for "just a cold." Even though for me that has meant dragging myself to school and doing whatever I could to get through the days so I could go home and try to rest. Unfortunately for me, congestion = inability to sleep because I can't breathe! Can you sense the vicious cycle?
Well, about a year ago a friend of mine told me about a "Nature's Flu Shot" drink that is promoted online on various sites. There are different versions if you search, but the main idea is that it has immune-boosting, antiviral, and antibiotic properties that simply help your body fight off disease. My essential oil-loving friends have discovered that same principal, that there are naturally-occurring substances in foods that can help our bodies. I suspect that not everyone reacts the same way to these substances, but I like the concept.
I'm pleased to announce that I have been one whole year without a debilitating cold since I started taking my "Nature's Flu Shot" almost every day. Since February 2013 I did start to get sick 3 or 4 times, but it always was mild and went away in days, not weeks, and I never reached that "miserable" stage that I described before.
Here's the recipe that I use:
6 lemons, juiced
2 T Manuka honey (I order online from Amazon, expensive!)
2 t ginger powder (you can grate fresh ginger too)
1/2 t turmeric
1/4 t cayenne
1 to 2 Cups orange juice (or other juice that you like)
The time-consuming part is juicing the lemons. My old juicer serves me well and gets the job done fast. I put all this in a small one-quart plastic bottle. You may need to label this so that some unsuspecting victim doesn't pour a glass of this thinking it's ordinary OJ!
I drink one very small shot per day. And if I start feeling sick I have 3 or 4 shots a day until all symptoms go away.
Let me end with a couple properties of these ingredients that I read from Web MD:
lemon juice - vitamin C rich, immune-stimulating
ginger - anti-inflammatory, good for digestion
Manuka honey - antibacterial, antioxidant
turmeric - anti-inflammatory
cayenne pepper - good for digestion
Most versions of "Nature's Flu Shot" call for garlic, but I can't consume it raw. I use garlic in so many other recipes that I don't need to put it in this.
If you use a version of this drink, please leave a comment and let me know how it works for you. All I know is, I'm hooked and I wanted to share this with my blog friends in case it can help someone like me.
No comments:
Post a Comment