Fall. Warm Days. Crisp Mornings. One minute you need a jacket and the next you can’t find it because it’s on a park bench or at the office, because it’s so warm walking home you can’t imagine you needed your coat this morning. It’s a great time of year, especially if you are a virus!
Fall means the viruses are out and the immune system is often down, delayed by the cold weather. So what can we do to boost our own immune systems?
Watch this short video for one of my methods (and my current favourite shortcut!) and let me know in the comments what you do for your immune system!
Looking for some personal support finding natural solutions to boost your immune system? Book your complimentary consult with me and find out how naturopathic medicine can help you optimize your health!
Good afternoon, everyone. It is just afternoon, and I am sorry if you caught my previous video tech failure, but we are back up and running. What I just wanted to talk about today was these crazy temperatures that we have going on here.
I know in Guelph we're having a beautiful day of 26, and if you're catching this in a couple of days, it's supposed to be a lot cooler. That's been the case for the month of October, really.
It's been warm and cool, but it's really challenging for the immune system. I know my daughter's been sick. Getting lots of viruses from daycare. That's no fun for anyone. It's not fun for me. It's not fun for her.
What I really wanted to talk about is how we can do a little protection of ourselves through this time of year. In traditional Chinese medicine, this season of transition is really the Earth time, and this is when it's really important to nourish your immune system to keep yourself from getting sick.
One of the traditional ways to do this is to make a change of season soup. There's a bunch of herbs in there. Codonopsis, Astragalus, Dioscorea, and Chinese lychee berries. These are all decocted, or cooked in ... which just means boiled in water for a really long time. You imagine, in your kitchen, you've got a pot of water, and you're adding all these herbs, and then boiling them for a couple of hours to really pull all of the essences out of them.
I would love to sit here and tell you that I did this for my daughter, but I didn't, because I don't really ... I shouldn't say I don't have time, but I have not made the time to sit and decoct this out for her. What I did do was I went to the health food store next door to my office, the Stone Store, and I bought this: Deep Immune Kids.
This is something that I sometimes use in practice to help immune systems. Of those four herbs that I talked about, two of them, the ones that are most appropriate for children, are in this formula. They also have a Deep Immune Adults that has the adult versions of it, along with a couple of other immune herbs.
While decocting herbs in your kitchen is great if you can do it, and I totally think that if that's something you want to give a try, talk to your doctor, talk to your naturopath, make sure that those herbs are good for you, and not going to interact with any of your medications or medical conditions. Give that a try. But this is another option that I use. A little more convenient. A little better for me and my life right now.
Yeah. It's really is a time of a lot of temperature fluctuations, and there are options out there, from do-it-yourself options, to tinctures that someone else has made and you just administer to yourself or to your child. I guess I just want to know what you do to keep your and your family well this time of year. If you've got anything that you do at home that you feel like protects yourself and your family from these crazy temperature swings, I'd love to hear. Leave that in the comments, and I'll see you again next week.