Sickness and Heath: How I have Been Treating Flu-like Symptoms

Popi and I visited the 2017 Rainbow Gathering together. We had a great time, met new important people in our lives, ate great food, and shared experiences of ecstatic being. The Gathering was great, but it was a likely source of getting infected with some form of contagious disease. With thousands of people there from all over the world, sickness was bound to be spread.

A day after getting back to Utah from Oregon, Popi and I began to notice a sore throat coming on. We ate lots of smoothies with lots of vitamin C, took probiotics, vaped medicinal herbs, and waited. After another day, we were sick. After another, we were sick as dogs.

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Remedies from memories

Feeling sick is no fun. I felt a lot of congestion and soreness in the throat, along with pressure in my head, but I was not going to go to the doctor for this. I recalled some remedies that people have told me in the past. Words swirled in my brain and in the aether, words like garlic, apple cider vinegar, honey, and osha root. The word and memories I resonated most with was garlic. Something about that pungent spice made my sick feeling body crave that bulbous plant.

Purple streaked varieties are said to be better

Learning how to use garlic

I searched DuckDuckGo for how to properly use garlic to treat sickness. The way I found described that I felt called to do was to crush or chop a single clove to expose the inside to the air, and then to let it sit for about 10 minutes before eating it raw in a spoonful and follow with a sip of water. The reasoning as to why you let it sit for 10 minutes I found at wisegeek.com:

Garlic in its natural state is not a good source of allicin. However, when the garlic bulb is cut or bruised in some manner, enzymes in the garlic begin to react and create the compound.

Thanks wisegeek.com! But what is allicin? I found an answer from garlic-central.com:

Allicin is the most powerful medicinal compound derived from garlic and provides the greatest reputed health benefits.

Ok, that's all I needed to hear, most powerful compound? We want that one. So I crushed my garlic and waited.

I tried to crush without pushing all of the oils out

The garlic had a soothing spicyness to it that felt healing as it slid down my throat in slimy chunks. It sounds like it would inducing gagging, but I did not choke. The garlic was very medicinal.

Other remedies I used

Something else I tried was taking shots of diluted apple cider vinegar. I have done this before as a general health tonic, and I was eager to feel what drinking ACV would do to me while feeling sick. When choosing an apple cider vinegar for medicinal use, I think it is best to choose one that is organic. Also look for brands that are "with the mother". The "mother" is the floating bits and stringy chunks at the bottom of the un-shook container. I keep Bragg's brand around, so I used that.

I made cups of 10 times diluted ACV. How I did this was measure out half a shot glass of ACV and add to a cup, then add 5 whole shot glasses of water to the cup, then swirl around a little, then drink in a big gulp. Two of these had me feeling very warm inside, and also energized.

I also took several spoonfuls of honey and that really helped with my throat soreness. I avoid honey because I don't see that the way the honeybees are farmed is sustainable or regenerative, however I made an exception because of the well known medicinal properties it has.

In addition to the honey for my throat, I also used a osha root extract based cough syrup. This seemed to help me get more mucous out of me and reduced the severity and frequency of the cough I was experiencing.

I upped my herb vaping a little on my sickest days, that seemed to help a lot with the body aches, and also with keeping my spirits lifted, and with staying motivated to cook and clean while feeling unwell.

This is a medical device

A few times I also used green tea to help me feel energized with the heaviness of sickness weighing on me. It did help warm me up and made me feel less lethargic. Every day I was also having lots of fruit, some in smoothies. I upped my vitamin C intake higher than it usually is. These remedies seemed to help me recover faster!

How about now?

Now it has been 10 days since I first felt a sore throat. I still have some congestion, but other than that I am feeling much better! I feel my body healing itself with the tools it has and the supplements I gave it. I usually don't feel unwell for this long, although I can feel that I avoided something really nasty. I only had one day where I didn't feel well enough to get up out of the bed. The length that these congestion symptoms have lingered gives me a gratitude for how quickly the most severe symptoms passed through me and left me able to function again.

In summary

• Garlic
• Apple Cider Vinegar
• Honey
• Osha Root
• Teas
• Medical Herbs/Flowers

These remedies, in my opinion, helped me recover faster than I would have without them based on the severity of symptoms that I experienced during the height of feeling sick. I'm sure if I would have felt nausea that I could have chosen herbs to vape for that. I am so thankful to have a functioning body and immune system, and to live in a place where I can access the foods I need to feel better.

Lovin' You and Thanks for the Read!