Natural Ways to Keep From Catching a Cold

You know that antibiotics don't cure colds, right? Well, did you know there are natural ways to keep from catching a cold? It's true that the occasional virus might slip through all safety measures, but it's certainly within our power to reduce the number of times that we are laid low by the common cold. And no I'm not a doctor and if you are sick or need medical advice, you should probably call one. Now, onto my practical tips that (in my humble opinion) have helped me to keep myself and my family from getting sick so often.

HANDWASHING is perhaps the most important and well publicized means of avoiding illnesses of all kinds.


KEEP YOUR HANDS AWAY FROM YOUR FACE! My mom is a stickler about not touching our faces (nose, eyes, mouths) with our hands. She says that when she was a kid they actually had a place on their report cards where they were graded on keeping their hands away from their faces! Since this is a favorite way for germs and viruses to enter our bodies, we probably should start teaching this rule to school children again!

DRINK A HOT BEVERAGE! I read where it's a good idea to drink a cup of something like tea as hot as you can stand it at least once a day to clean out the cooties from the back of your throat. It makes sense to me, so my kids all get a cup of hot green tea a day.

GARGLE WITH SALT WATER Another way to keep those germs to the curb that lurk in the back of our throats is to gargle with very warm salt water.

SWAB OUT THOSE NOSTRILS! Soak a Q-tip with salt water and swab out your nostrils once a day.

SKIP THE SUGARY SNACKS AND YES...EVEN JUICE! Sugar is not good for the immune system. Even a glass of orange juice has a negative effect on its germ fighting capabilities. Cold and flu season is especially not a good time to load up on cookies, candy and other bad carbohydrates for this reason.

VITAMINS Eat vitamin packed meals to give your body the weapons it needs to fight its way to good health should one of the nasty viruses break through our line of defense. If you don't get out in the sun, pay special attention that you are getting enough Vitamin D.

Those are my favorite, natural ways to keep from catching a cold. If I skipped any, would you please be so kind as to drop a comment and tell me your favorite ways to avoid catching a cold or flu?

NATURAL MOSQUITO BITE RELIEF

I have been experimenting with various remedies looking for natural mosquito bite relief. Where we live, the skeeters are so big we laugh about them. Only they are not funny at all when they bite and leave big, ugly swollen bumps on my little girls.

For those of you just surfing through, my daughter has MRSA and the sight of a red bump on her skin can mean something very serious and be a prediction of misery to come. Actually I'm usually relieved to ascertain that the irritation is just another bug bite rather than an indicator of a serious (and very dangerous) infection even though one can quickly lead to another if we're not careful.

I like to use natural remedies whenever I can so I am trying out this recipe for natural mosquito bite relief and if you haven't already got this tip in your handy little tool kit, here's the easy recipe:

All you have to do is take some oatmeal water and mix with plain yogurt
.

WHAT IS OATMEAL WATER
:
Yeah, I'd never heard this term either but what you do is wrap some oatmeal (plain, not the instant, sweetened kind) in a square of cheesecloth or clean muslin (I used a piece of old cotton sheet) and run cold water through it enough to get it good and soaked. Take the sopping wet package and squeeze the water out over a glass jar (you might use a plastic container, but I'm personally avoiding plastics these days) saving the liquid. Voila...you have oatmeal water.

Put your jar of oatmeal water in the refrigerator to keep it cold and ready to mix up with some yogurt and plaster on your mosquito bites to alleviate itching and inflammation.

This is not only a recipe for natural mosquito bite relief but a good remedy that you can make yourself to soothe sunburns. Natural remedies may not give results as fast, but many times they work just as well and (in my humble opinion) are better than treating mosquito bites by dousing ourselves in alcohol and hydrocortisone creams. PLUS, if your kids happen to lick the bite (hey...can you really say this won't happen?) it's chemical free, non toxic and the worst case scenario is that it doesn't taste good.

Other suggestions that I've read for natural mosquito bite relief are to apply

• Slices of lime
• Apple cider vinegar
• Salt water
• A taste of Epsom salts and water
• Meat tenderizer

I haven't tried any of these natural mosquito bite treatments and have no idea if they will actually eliminate the swelling and itching or even if they are safe. One of the more outrageous treatments I saw was to cover mosquito bites in PINESOL which may or may not work, but the mere mention of this is virtually guaranteed to give those of us searching for natural remedies the heebie-jeebies!