Dear Friends,
I’ve been meaning to write this blog post for years. This year’s virus finally spurred me into action and I could hold it in no longer. To my knowledge, Allopathy hasn’t had much to offer in this year’s bug season beyond basic hygiene advice, so it’s time to look at what’s provided by nature. So often I’ve met someone that benefitted from a small tip I gave them that improved their health. My own journey to balanced good health has been through pure, appropriate food and alternative medicine, and that path has been long and winding. I’m going to share it all with you, in hopes that your own path may be more quick and direct.
In case you’ve been paying a lot of attention to the media, you might be worried. But I’ve got good news for you. Go get a hot drink to sip on, then come back to your computer and read this. I promise, you’ll feel better afterwards. Hint…the hot drink can help anyway!
Got your drink? Great. Now take a deep breath and relax.
Word from a researcher in Shenzhen:
It is characterized by a dry cough with no runny nose. That’s the easiest way to identify it. If you’ve got a runny nose or a juicy cough, don’t fret.
Coronavirus pneumonia (yes he called it a pneumonia) is not temperature resistant. It dies in air temperatures over 79 degrees. His advice is to drink hot liquids; especially ginger tea, soups made of ginger, garlic and chilies, and exercise. All of these things bring heat into the body. In fact, drinking ginger tea is a home remedy for flu and colds anyway and is being researched as a natural antibiotic for superbugs. You can’t go wrong. My advice? Take a sauna if you think you’ve been exposed, or just do it for fun. Drink lots of hot liquids. They feel good when it’s cold out anyway.
The coronavirus dies when exposed to sun. So if you’re in a nice warm sunny place, spend time outside. At least you will kill off any such pathogens on areas of the body where you can get sunlight! (Wink wink nudge nudge. Nude beach anyone?)
Now for the general tips. This is where my personal experience comes in. I’m allergic to antibiotics. Penicillin, Erythromycin and Sulfa drugs all give me allergic reactions. (And yes, I’ve had doctors prescribe them for viruses before…”just in case.”) Back when I took antibiotics, I used to get a sinus infection twice a year and the flu every year. Since I discovered the natural prevention methods, I HAVEN’T BEEN SICK IN SIX YEARS. In my experience, these natural methods I’m going to share with you work much faster and have no side effects. You may know that many years ago I discovered the power of Ayurveda in curing my thyroid. But that’s another story.
There are some basics for keeping well in any flu/cold season. These basics will also lead you on a path toward optimal health.
Hygiene
Gut health/overall immunity
Your Vitamin D levels
Ayurvedic supplements
Homeopathy
Battling germs when you need to
Meditation & quality rest
Shift your awareness
You have choices
HYGIENE. We’ve all heard about how a bad flu 100 years ago took many lives. Well, that was 100 years ago, and although hand washing was discovered in 1840 (in the west at least), it took a long time to become popular. Doing the very basic act of washing your hands, with regular soap, after you use the bathroom, go out in public and before and after you eat go a long way in keeping you healthy. Also—don’t eat food off other people’s plates, as obviously this will spread germs quickly. Sneezing etiquette is also part of Hygiene 101. You know the basics. Practice them.
A note on gloves: We were headed over to the commercial kitchen 2 days back to make a load of cookie samples. On the way, we decided to replenish our foodservice gloves but the restaurant supply store was closed so stopped at a few drugstores. They were all sold out! This is all fine, but if you’re going to use gloves to stay healthy, you have to know HOW to use them. 1. They don’t stop airborne bugs (essential oils do that much better). 2. They don’t work if you use them like your own hands. Since we make food and I’m a hygiene freak, I can’t tell you how much I cringe when I go to a restaurant and see the food worker put on gloves, scratch their head, touch their clothes, drink their soda and then…make my sandwich? No way! Or cut a meat sandwich then try to use the same board and knife for my vegetarian one? Nope! Whenever I see such behavior I point it out and ask them to put on fresh gloves and use a fresh knife and board for my sandwich. Recently at the doctor’s office, I watched a gloved health worker open the door of the office, and then hand me a supposedly sterile instrument to put in my mouth! Thank you, but no. If you touched that door handle with those same gloves, that’s not a sterile instrument anymore and it’s not going in my mouth. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that washing your hands is better than gloves! It won’t give you a false sense of security. With hand washing, you have to stay alert.
GUT HEALTH. Some say that germ theory is dead, and gut health is the 21st century way of solving health. This is a fascinating topic as big as an ocean and we won’t go into all of it. Let me just say that, while actual bugs can cause disease, they can’t take root if your whole immune system is healthy. We breathe germs all the time. They’re everywhere. There are in fact viruses and bacteria that our bodies can’t function without. That’s a good reason to avoid antibiotics if you can. They kill both harmful and beneficial bacteria and it can be tricky to get them in balance again. Then, when the next bug comes along, you’re more vulnerable because your immune system was pre-compromised. We all know that keeping our gut healthy is a very important basic premise of health. To optimize your gut health, eat plenty of foods with fiber, moderate your sugar and be sure to eat probiotic foods or take supplements. Kefir is one of my favorites, but I tend to like fermented milk beverages. :) Tibicos is a similar vegan option. At the very least, take supplements if you’re too busy to pay attention to eating probiotic foods.
A Note on Eating Organic: Glyphosate (the main chemical used on genetically engineered and other non-organic crops) kills good gut bugs. At the same time, it allows bad bugs (like Candida and E. coli) to proliferate. So eat all organic, all the time, at least this season. You might feel so good you decided to drop non-organic for good. For more info, visit Jeffrey Smith’s site, Institute for Responsible Technology.
A note on Prebiotics (and a plug for Prana to the People!) “Prebiotic” is what is meant by foods that help probiotics or good bugs flourish in your gut. Fiber is an excellent prebiotic. Even in our cookie kits, we include intentional, prebiotic ingredients! Yes, our cookie mix contains more protein and fiber and less sugar per serving than many breakfast cereals, actually and truly. We use ingredients like organic carob bean gum, which is a satvic, life supporting gum from a tree. We use flax and chia for texture. We don’t use xanthan gum because it’s broccoli mold. Eeeeewww! Mold isn’t life supporting—it’s life-decomposing. We don’t use guar gum because it’s a gut irritant. And as it happens…these prebiotic, life supporting ingredients all create a better texture together than the cheaper, more common ingredients. But I digress. The point is, eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables. The vitamins in them will do you good anyway. And if you’re going to eat cookies, eat ours! They’re tastier, have a better texture, AND they’re better for you! Prebiotics to the People!
VITAMIN D. Research shows that taking Vitamin D is more effective than flu shots at preventing the flu. Cold and flu season happens during winter because we don’t tend to go outside as much when it’s cold, and when we do we're generally bundled up. This can cause our vitamin D levels to drop to the point that we can’t fight off bugs very effectively. If you tend to get the flu every year, try getting your Vitamin D levels checked by your doc, then add a daily supplement to fill in what you’re not getting from the sun. Or if you want to be simple about it, just add a vitamin D supplement that you choose. For most people, adding 1000-2000mg of vitamin D per day is helpful, not harmful. Most of us are Vitamin D deficient anyway, with the possible exception of hiking tour guides and lifeguards!
AYURVEDIC SUPPLEMENTS: It’s been recommended by an Ayurvedic doctor that I respect, to take Amruth, Amla (a great source of vitamin C), Tulsi and Shakti Drops to stay well this year. Shakti Drops were formulated by His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the founder of Art of Living. They are sold by Sri Sri Tattwa, the Art of Living brand. They have shown great promise in medical research. You can get them on Amazon.
HOMEOPATHY: I have read that during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, almost no one died who had been treated homeopathically. Amazing, right? I won’t go into the specifics. If you want to read more, visit the source I got it from which is this: realimmunity.org. To see the data I just referenced, click the link and scroll down just a bit., maybe 1/10th of the page. In any case, there is a strong evidence basis for the effectiveness of homeopathy. Check it out if you feel attracted to it. I find Cilla's whole website to be a breath of fresh air.
BATTLING GERMS. As we’ve already established, germs are everywhere. You can stay home, watch TV, look at your phone and worry or you can optimize your health, live your life and flourish. If you’re doing some or all of the above and you still want extra armor, you have loads of natural options. And, to be honest...who among us always gets as much rest as we need? (I’m guilty as charged.) When we’re overworked or tired, that’s when our immune systems get suppressed and we tend to fall prey to all sorts of ills including “bugs.” So pay attention to this section if you’re guilty like I am!
Battling Germs #1: Chinese Herbs. For a few years, I went to a wonderful Chinese doctor in the inner richmond. At first, I would have a full on sinus infection before going. This doctor would take my pulse, then give me a big bag of several smaller bags of roots and weeds and stuff that looked like it had been dug up out of the backyard. As my friend Philip says, it tastes like boiled, burnt tennis shoes, but it works! And it does. Because I can’t take antibiotics and needed options, I was grateful for this. Still, after a couple of years of Chinese Herbs, the herbs started to give me massive heart palpitations. No longer an option. Enter the Bay Leaf.
Battling Germs #2: Bay Leaf Tea. The California Bay Tree is a Miwok Indian remedy for colds and flu. See our bay leaf tea recipe for more on that.
At some point, I started to put bay leaves in my chai. After all, many Marin locals use it interchangeably with the bottled mediterranean type in their soups. Then I learned that the Bay tree was used in Miwok medicine. Miwoks were the local people that lived here and worked with our local plants for thousands of years before Allopathy even existed. They’d know a thing or two, and I‘m grateful that a few people recorded their history.
The Bay tree is highly aromatic. It’s sometimes called “pepperwood” and based on what I’m going to tell you next, that’s for a reason! It’s SPICY! An easy, gentle way to use this plant is to roll up a tender leaf and put one in each ear. The Miwok did that, including for kids. The volatile oils move around in your respiratory system and kill bad bugs. For a few years, I would take a stash of bay leaves with me when traveling in the winter. It seemed like people tended to get sick in cold places. Boiling up some of the leaves would always work and everybody gets well. But it’s easy to forget to pack them. Enter essential oils! They fit in your pocket and they’re easier because they don’t even have to be boiled.
Battling Germs #3: Essential oils. The reason the Bay Tree is so effective at keeping us well is because of its essential oils. Making bay leaf tea and breathing it in is basically brewing your own fresh, very spicy, wasabi-like essential oil. I used to think Aromatherapy was fluffy. It’s pleasant and smells nice but couldn’t possibly be medicinal. How WRONG I was! Essential oils are powerful medicine. In fact, the scented components in essential oils are the very part that heals and has antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal properties. Drug companies have been trying to manufacture synthetic essential oils for years, because they know they work. MRSA, the antibiotic resistant hospital bacteria, occurs in the nose. Merely smelling essential oils kills MRSA. Essential oils pass easily through skin and all tissues of the body, including the blood brain barrier. If you put peppermint oil on your feet, you will taste it in your mouth in a few minutes. This phenomenon is probably why putting bay leaves in your ears works to clear colds and flu.
Also, most essential oils can be ingested. There are a few caveats though.
They must be steam-distilled, not chemically extracted.
They must be 100% pure essential oil, not diluted with a carrier oil. Be careful on this, you have to know your brands and read reviews.
Certain oils cannot be ingested, including eucalyptus. Some that can be ingested are extremely spicy or potent and unpleasant even if they are safe, and need to be diluted to ingest. Follow the manufacturer instructions. If you have a friend who sells Doterra, talk to them. It’s a lovely brand and they’ve done a lot of excellent research, including on what can be ingested and what cannot. I also have other specific recommendations.
In some cases, like if you want to rub essential oils onto your skin, you might want to use a carrier oil, because essential oils are expensive and they will go further that way.
My favorite go-to is Frankincense. It’s extremely powerful. It’s antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal and antitumor. It’s hard to go wrong with Frankincense. It also tends to put you in a pleasant mood. Frankincense has different varieties that grow in different regions. You’ve probably heard of Boswellia Sacra, which is believed to be the type the wise guys gave baby Jesus. It might be true. In any case, Boswellia Sacra has been researched extensively for all kinds of properties, much of which focuses on its anti tumor properties. Google it if you like. Let’s just say it’s powerful. I personally know a handful of people who have refused chemo and taken Frankincense, got well, never lost their hair and are still living happily. But I digress. Back to its germ-fighting properties. My favorite method is two drops of Frankincense on the tongue morning and night, after brushing teeth. It stays in my mouth so the volatile oils are easily on hand to my respiratory tract.
My two favorite Frankincense brands:
Cliganic Boswellia Serrata - This is Indian Frankincense. It’s milder tasting, antiviral, antibacterial, antiifungal, and for me, also helps stop wheezing. The manufacturer says not to ingest it but I do it anyway because it meets my standards of being from an edible plant that’s been steam distilled. All varieties of Frankincense are antitumor, and each type has specialties.
Aura Cacia Boswellia Sacra - This is the Biblical Frankincense from Oman. It’s extremely powerful and has highly revered (and coveted by pharma) anti tumor properties as well as the standard antiviral, antibacterial and anti fungal. It’s mild and delicate smelling but IMO tastes a bit like spicy vinegar and campho phenique.
Doterra has a really nice frankincense made of 4 varieties combined together. IMO it smells weird or “busy” but it likely packs a therapeutic punch.
Other good, ingestible essential oils: Rose Geranium or Geranium smell super nice and they’re extremely powerful, Lemongrass is spicy but extremely effective, Black Spruce is my absolute favorite, and Lavender smells nice and it’s popular. A note on rose. Rose Absolute is chemically extracted so cannot be ingested. Rose Otto is steam distilled and can. It’s very expensive though so you might choose to use it sparingly. It’s also very powerful.
Essential oils are also said to increase the effectiveness of any supplements you take made of the same plant. In my opinion, Essential oils are one of the best ways to keep kids healthy, because they work just by rubbing onto the skin, no pills to gag down. The other day, my son said he was coming down with something. He was getting that telltale taste in his throat. I let him smell some essential oils and choose one he liked the smell of. He chose a blend with black spruce. I had him rub it on his hands and put some under his nose. He felt better in 10 minutes. As for dropping on the tongue, my son can’t tolerate the taste of the Oman frankincense, but he doesn’t mind the Indian kind. Anyway, Essential oils are phenomenal. I’ve just discovered them. Feel free to explore them for yourself; it’s a wonderful, healing world.
MEDIATION & QUALITY REST, and a plug for Art of Living: Now that we’ve improved our immune systems and battled germs, let’s meditate on that. Ahem. I suppose “ruminate” would be a more appropriate word, because meditation is the art of doing NOTHING. Ruminating is mulling over something specific. Meditation is powerful. It’s been shown to improve the immune system. And a particular breathing meditation, called SKY, or Sudarshan Kriya (which I practice daily) has shown promise in shutting off our disease genes. Here’s the study. Think about this. It is profound. If doing a particular meditation practice can shut off your disease genes, it might make you less susceptible to any disease, including coronavirus. I’d be interested in doing a count of SKY practitioners (I am one!) and everyone else, and see the percentage of people in each group that gets sick from coronavirus.
Regardless of genes or any specific disease, we know that meditation improves our immune system. If you want to learn meditation or amp up your existing daily practice by learning SKY, there could be no better time than now. David and I are teaching an Art of Living Happiness Program workshop featuring SKY meditation in Marin County March 20-22. Just so you know, we’re volunteer teachers and we don’t get money from your participation. You can sign up at tiny.cc/happymarin. If you’re not in Marin, check out artofliving.org for a Happiness Program near you.
Another aspect of meditation is that it provides quality rest. Have you ever woken up after sleeping 8 hours and still felt tired? That happens when our minds are full of garbage. Doing breathing and meditation is like a laundry chute for garbage. Voila! Drop it and it’s gone. In my experience, a good 20 minute meditation can provide deeper rest than 8 hours of sleep. SKY meditation also improves sleep. There are studies on that too.
SHIFT YOUR AWARENESS. Along my winding path to health, there has been one theme to the transformation. When I relied on mainstream Allopathic medicine, I never thought of prevention at all. I would be full on sick before I even noticed. I think it was after I developed allergies not only to Penicillin (in college), but to Erythromycin (as a young professional) and even Sulfa drugs (as a young mom), that I realized something had to shift. Allopathic advocates act like it was the dark ages before there was penicillin. I believed that too. For a while I thought Chinese Herbs were my salvation. But when they proved problematic too, there were a few months when I paid close attention to my daily health, to nip anything in the bud, because I thought that at least for me, if I get an infection, there is no cure. Honestly, it’s kind of scary to grow up thinking antibiotics are the answer to life, and then realize you can’t take any of them! But this is, you could say, where the shift started to happen. If I felt tired I would drink ginger tea. If I got a sniffle I’d drink ginger tea or put more herbs in my chai. Then bay leaf. And that led to discovery of essential oils, and here we are. But in this transformation, here was the gift. I’ll spell it out.
If you shift your awareness from needing to get full on sick before you take notice, to paying attention when you barely start to feel off, you need never get sick again.
If you do nothing but this, you’ll go a long way.
YOU HAVE CHOICES. As I’ve shared, I used to think the only way was to get sick before I could get well. That was the way of Allopathy. But it’s not the only choice. In BEING well and STAYING well, just like in eating, you have a multitude of choices. There’s a whole world out there. To choose from, you have: Ayurveda, Herbal Medicine, Essential Oils, Gut Health, Chinese Medicine or TCM, Acupuncture, Marma, Chiropractic, Homeopathy, Osteopathy, Allopathy, Native American Medicine, Intuitive Medicine, Energy Healing, Lifestyle and more. Just like when grocery shopping, you can choose the brands that work for you, all, none, or some of each. The point is, do what works for you. Use your own judgment. If someone tells you to do something that feels wrong or makes you feel uncomfortable, DON’T DO IT. This applies whether it’s me, a friend of yours, a random online person or your own doctor telling you to do something. I am blessed to know some wonderful, amazing, open-minded and brilliant Allopathic doctors, both as practitioners on me and as friends. Include these brilliant doctors in your journey to optimal health when you feel it is appropriate. But the point is, stay alert. They’re not always perfect, many don’t understand or agree to evaluate your progress with natural methods, and not all of them are brilliant. Your doctor is yours to fire if you feel they are not doing the right thing. You are the customer; you are not their inmate. No one knows what you need better than you do.
I’m not a doctor so…”Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on our blog or any linked materials.”
In other words, “practice pharmobedience.” (NOT!) Remember, CHOICES ARE YOURS. Your health is up to you.
Here’s to your sweet beautiful path to balanced, thriving health.
Love and blessings always!
Lisa
