The Pros & Cons of Flu Remedies

The last week or so clients have been coming down with the sniffles, a slight sore throat, and some good old greenish boogers.

Typical signs that our bodies are fighting something.

But hey, it’s that time of year – at least that what the statistics tell us.

As you know, I attempt to remedy most everything naturally. I’ll tell you why that’s important a little later in this post (with some shocking images) but here’s a glimpse of some of the things I’ve been doing to prevent this “sickness” from getting worse…and hopefully nipping it in the butt:

• ACV Tea – warm water with 1-2 tbsp apple cider vinegar, juice of 1/2 lemon, and 1 tsp of honey
• Throat Soother Tea – warm water with 1 tbsp ACV, juice of 1/2 lemon, 1 tsp honey, 1 inch cube ginger (grated and juiced squeezed), and pinch of cayenne pepper.
• Gargling with warm salt water with pinch of cayenne pepper added – spicy but it’s an awesome antibacterial.
• Neti pot (using warm salt water) to clear out blocked sinuses.
• Drinking kombucha daily for it’s terrific probiotics. Kids also receive their infant probiotics.
• Increasing vitamin D3 intake (close to 10,000 IU/day)
• 2-3 tbsp fish oil daily
• Halls throat lozenges (just got these last night)
• ColdFX – I’ve never tried if before so I’m giving it a go.

All of these weapons are in addition to eating a healthy diet.

Feel free to hijack these remedies if you’re feeling a little under the weather. Each of them plays an important role in supporting your immune system, lowering inflammation, and killing off bacterial/viral infections.

Now, here’s why I’m so adamant about going about all this naturally…

Two nights ago, I spent close to 30 minutes at Rite Aid to find some suitable cold/flu/sore throat remedies.

To my dismay (but not surprisingly) 99% of the options were absolutely atrocious. Why?

Because they were loaded with either boat loads of acetaminophen (like Tylenol), which destroys your digestive tract, or unnecessary additives like aspartame and food dyes.

Here are some examples:

Buckley’s complete cold and cough. However, upon looking at the ingredient list I almost lost my dinner. 325mg of acetaminophen in just ONE teaspoon! That’s almost as much as is found in Tylenol extra strength. No thank you! I should mention that the acetaminophen is only found in their “flu” formulations.

Check out the product info from their website:

 

Notice the CAUTION – “…contains enough drug to seriously harm a child”. Not good.

Obviously, I passed on Buckley’s.

Now, let’s have a look at some of throat lozenges available to us. These were even worse.

First, I picked up a package of Ricola because I’ve seen their commercials over the years. I figured they might be good. The initial ingredients looked promising until they snuck in the aspartame and acesulfame-K. Might as well be drinking Coke Zero.

 

Again, my recommendation of NOT buying anything that see advertised on TV holds true.

When I was younger, I used to use Cepacol quite a bit. Apparently, I had a lot of throat infections when I was younger. Thank you antibiotics. Thankfully, I haven’t used Cepacol in more than a decade. This ingredient list will show you why…but you need to look all the way at the bottom where the plethora of toxic ingredients is found:

 

Can you count the number of toxic ingredients that proven to DAMAGE human health?

I count the following:

• acesulfame potassium
• FD &C blue #1
• FD & C red #40
• propylene glycol (more commonly used in de-icing liquids for cars and airplanes)
• sucrose

WOW!

Hopefully, this post serves as a friendly reminder that although many over the counterflu remedies (which are really drugs) put forth good intentions, they can really do more damage with prolonged use.

Stick to the recommendations I made at the beginning of this post and you should be ok. At the very minimum, they’ll help reduce the severity and duration of your cold or flu.