(And Two Hard Steps)
Step one, the hard part. You have to notice you are sick.
This may not sound like a hard thing to do. But in our culture often we live very disconnected lives from our bodies, and are perfectly capable of going around a whole week coughing, sneezing, infecting the people around us, and denying the possibility that we could be sick. (If you’ve never done this, trust me, I have.)
For very good sciency reasons that I will try to explain in a future blog post, if you treat a virus on the very first day that symptoms begin to appear you have a decent chance of affecting the length and severity of the illness. After the first day or two the best you can usually hope for is to alleviate the symptoms.
Step Two, the easy one. Make and drink this:
A homemade Chinese formula to treat the common cold:
Ingredients:
1 stick cinnamon
1-2 inches ginger root, sliced into thin coins
4 dates
1 pinch dried licorice root (you can usually find it at your local health food store)
2 cups water
Put all the ingredients in a small covered pot, and bring to a boil.
Lower heat, remove lid and cook over a small flame for 10 minutes.
Drain the liquid and drink it while hot.
Wrap yourself up in a blanket and rest for at least at hour (it’s important to stay warm.)
Repeat as necessary.
(You can also make a large batch and just heat it up over the course of the day.)
(Step Zero, also pretty easy. Go shopping so that you have the ingredients in your home.)
Step Three, the really hard one.
You have to rest.
That’s it. No way around it. Your body has only so much energy to go around, and anything you do other than sleeping means your immune system is working at less than 100% strength.
Whatever your boss, your mother or the little voice of guilt in your head might say, all the studies and science shows that it is best for everyone, literally all of society, if you take as much time as needed to recover, rather than staying sick longer while infecting other people and doing sub-par work.
And rest actually means that. Rest. Not running errands, cleaning the house, or getting caught up on email.
(Sorry parents of small children! I know this isn’t the most helpful advice for you….)
And there you have it.
Try not to get sick (avoid sick people, wash your hands properly with soap a lot, don’t skip sleep), but if you do get a chance to try this recipe, drop me a line to let me know how it worked.
And please share your best cold cures in the comments!
Check back next week for more strange health tips, or sign up to get them sent straight to your email!
If you were sent this post by a friend and have no clue what’s going on, Hi! I’m Havva Mahler, practitioner of Chinese medicine, acupuncture, herbs, tuina, reflexology, massage and stuff like that. You can normally find me at one of my clinics in Be’er Sheva or Sderot, or reading something about health and/or motivation. You can find out more about me here. Get in touch with me here. And see a horse getting acupuncture here!