You are starting to feel the telltale symptoms of a sore throat and headache that let you know you are fighting a bug. Yikes! You can’t afford to get sick right now with everything you’ve got going on. What to do?
Chinese Medicine has simple, effective technique for dodging a cold or flu when we catch it in the first day or two. When we get exposed to a virus or bacteria, it gets right to work to penetrate into our system and proliferate. Our immune system fights to defend its borders and keep it out, but often fails. Chinese medicine describes those first days as the Taiyang stage, which is fought on the surface level of our body system. Here is where we rely on our Wei Qi – or defensive Qi to prevent the pathogen to progress deeper into out body. If our qi is depleted from overwork, stress, or other health issues such as poor digestion or hormonal imbalance, our Wei Qi may be unable to do it’s job of defending.
The herbal method to clear a wind–heat or wind-cold invasion is to use herbs that induce a little sweat that acts to push the invader out of the body.
We can also use a simple physical method at home to induce a sweat that is highly effective in 5 easy steps.
1. Take a hot bath or shower. (Unless you are lucky enough to have a sauna)
2. Have hot tea or broth waiting at your bedside.
3. Rinse and dry off and get immediately under your covers, ideally with a pj’s, a cap and socks.
4. Sip the warm liquid until you start sweating and allow the sweat for about 20 minutes.
5. Rinse and dry off and change into dry clothes. **Don’t skip this step or you may catch a chill later and undo all of your good work.
Additional tips:
This is a good time to take a Chinese Herbal formula prescribed by your practitioner, such as Yin Qiao San, which clears a wind heat invasion characterized by a sore throat.
You can also increase your probiotic and use Zinc, Vit C, Echinachea an/or Elderberry.
Vit D is essential for our immune system to function at its best. We recommend taking 20,000 IU on the first day of your cold or flu. Then take 10,000 IU for the next two days. After that scale back to your maintenance dose prescribed by your practitioner.
Prioritize sleep. While you might have the instinct to power through your to-do list, research shows that sleep strengthens our immune system.
Drink soups and stews and generally eat healthy whole foods. You might make extra chicken soup and keep some in your freezer for just such an occasion.
This is NOT a time to drink alcohol, eat crappy food, overwork and skimp on sleep.
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Don’t go outside with a wet head now, (or really ever).
That’s it! It WORKS. Give it a whirl next time you are feeling those first signs of a cold and let us know how it goes! Also, think about working with your Double Happiness Health practitioner to look at underlying causes of frequent colds or flu’s so we can address the root cause and boost your immune system naturally. When your systems are functioning optimally, you are much less vulnerable to colds, flus, allergies and other pathogens.