Staying well in difficult times

Hi fellow Natural Medicine family members, and Steemians

There are many different methods people can utilize to stay well and healthy, in good times and bad. Lots of the Natural Medicine community have explored so many ones it's hard to put a guide to it all, they certainly cover every end of the spectrum!

As a more of a personal testament to what my wife and I do to stay healthy, we will just share some of the things that we've got on-hand in the house from our medicine cabinet and why. I’m going more towards routine supplements that can work together with our bodies to keep us healthy, or help work to fight off many things that can be thrown at us. After reading through it, it got quite lengthy (as some of my posts do it seems lol) so bear with me!

A little context is always helpful, right?

Some context to scenarios is always a plus. My wife and I had different teenage and early adult years. I'm not saying my diet was awesome, but she had a fast-food focused diet of pizza and french fries among other things. I ate a lot of salads, chicken and other things (with my fair share of pizza burgers and other not so healthy stuff of course, just not as much) that are a bit healthier (though I've always seemed to have a portion control problem lol) so my health has been better than hers. Things hit the fan when she had appendicitis and she knew when she got surgery, that she had to change her way of life otherwise she probably would end up dying because of it. That was her watershed moment and we've thankfully been on the road forward since. She is also missing her adenoids and tonsils, which all of those "accessory" organs if you subscribe to mainstream medical practices, are what we think is causing her issues since her body doesn't have a few of the essential components of the lymphatic and immune system. Our bodies put them there for a reason!

So when we started dating (not too long after she had her appendix out), one of the things I started to do with her is work on transforming her diet and habits. I think I knew subconsciously before I actually did, that I would end up marrying her so I put in all of the effort I could to help her get to a state of wellness. I think we’ve made great progress. The most noticeable thing was that cleaning up her diet and intestines, she gradually decreased her seasonal allergies. She would take 3-4 allergy meds a day just to survive. She hasn’t taken any in 5 years. She still gets some flares if it’s wicked bad pollen out but for the most part it’s not bad enough to need to take meds.

I'm not perfect in any sense, and we aren't Tom Brady type people who eat avocado ice cream and no nightshades, but we, I think, have overall good health practices. We pepper in there supplements and other things to have what we consider to be a pretty decent overall diet and lifestyle. We can always add more exercise but that will come in time as we go along, given our son is still a toddler. The exercise gets better each year.

Early steps

One of the earliest steps my wife was taking, and continues to this day, is to take probiotics daily. She started out with small amounts and has progressed to taking on average between 50-100 billion a day. We've found, through trial and unfortunate error, that not taking these amounts takes her system back a few steps and until her immune system is flushed from all of the junk, it will probably take a couple years to reduce it down to what I normally take, 30 billion a day.

A side note, we buy all of these products ourselves and are not sponsored in any way. We've found that some people don't disclose those relationships and review things quite well only to then find out they were receiving benefits from doing so, not cool!

Presently, she is taking these excellent probiotics. They are one of the strongest we've seen, at 112 billion per capsule, but boy do they work the balls! I think they changed their formulation recently due to some pressure by the FDA, which is unfortunate, but they still work pretty well. As you can see on the label, they are recommended for people who have IBS and ulcerative colitis. That's how we initially found them, her doctor was questioning if she had IBS or not, so we naturally did what any natural medicinal lover does, looks up what like-minded others are using! These probiotics are what has kept her on the path of recovery from allergies and the stomach issues she’s been having.

Echinacea is one of our go-to supplements when we’ve got a little cold coming on. The stuff kicks ass, and we used to find a good combination with goldenseal but have had difficulty the past few years finding it in pill form, liquids are iffy and don’t last as long. It’s great for supporting overall immune function but depending on which part of the plant they/you are using. source I just now read that the root is not meant for long term use, more for sinus issues and for short term use. Thankfully we don’t take them unless we need them. The upper part of the plant is good for routine immune boosters.

Goldenseal is another go-to supplement when we need it. Similar to echinacea we only use it when we aren’t feeling well. Checking out the source article, you can certainly see the awesome benefits of it. We’ve been a little lax lately knowing the up-to-date information on these things but we’ve had excellent success with them over the years so we keep using it. It’s great at helping the GI tract among other things.

Slippery elm has been one of our greatest finds overall. It’s a badass thing to have in your arsenal if you’ve got GI issues. It helps your intestines produce extra mucus (sounds fantastic huh) that help coat it and move things along, reducing irritation. My wife’s got diverticulosis and we’ve helped several family members by recommending they give this a try. Since they started, no one we’ve recommended them to has had a flare they need to go to the hospital for (but they also don’t take foolish risks that would cause them to go, of course. This just helps if they can feel one developing) an episode. It’s also fantastic on the skin if you’ve got a burn from the stove or something. source We keep three bottles on hand at all times. We even fed it to our cat when she had some diarrhea due to switching foods and it worked great.

This one is relatively new for our arsenal. It’s a great broad spectrum immune booster. Having garlic, olive leaf, elderberry and oil of oregano it’s really an all star that we will keep around. We knew about the powers of garlic and elderberry through past experience but olive leaf was a new one. It’s of course something to be explored further and tested but source and source 2 both highlight the immune boosting abilities and antiviral capability. It’s being explored as part of a way to treat the flu, which could be relevant to what we are handling now. The need for natural antivirals is as good now as ever.

This has been our go-to for the little guy since he was a year old. He got his first cold at 1, which was great that we held it off so long. Some get mad at us for not taking him out to lick the pole at the park, but having his body focus on growing is more important than buying into the mindset that kids need to get sick to be normal. We have given him toddler probiotics since about 6 months, so his immune system is working pretty damn well. In those scenarios where he still gets sick, we give him this excellent elderberry syrup. We have to limit it to the morning though, it gives him insane energy, we have no idea why lol

This one is brand new to our stash. My wife had a pretty brutal sinus infection at the end of last year and we gave this a try. It’s got ginger in it and is a nasal mist. The ginger burns a bit but really clears out your nose. There was a cayenne version but that was a bit extreme. The ginger version works well to clear out the sinuses!

This is quite literally the newest member of the immune system defense lineup. We’ve read for years about the awesome benefits of colloidal silver but never made the jump until the big C stuff going on. We figure it certainly can’t hurt to add another tool to the toolbox we have to stay healthy. This one was had good ratings on amazon so we figured why not? Has anyone used this one? Feedback would be cool!

This is the last one and just something I use in particular. I grabbed it from the store when our son got sick with the stomach bug and was pooping his brains out. I needed to keep working without getting sick and I’ve read the benefits of having this around so gave it a try. Happy to say I didn’t get his sickness at all by taking them. They absorb pretty much everything so you have to be careful when taking them. I would take them about an hour before and after eating so that I had defenses in both directions lol. You have to drink lots of water when taking them to keep things moving. Hospitals everywhere in America have this on hand, it is an incredibly cheap and great addition to your cabinet!

This is my entry for the contest hosted by the @naturalmedicine page and community, you can find the contest post here!. I would enjoy people sharing thoughts and comments with me, particularly if you use any of these or can recommend others!

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