Our Health Journey: Children's Remedies
Children’s health remedies
Hello there! As Fall is here and Winter approaches, I wanted to share a few things we have been using with our kids and have had success with. I love to share anything that can help make families healthier and prevent sickness before it starts. These sites (and our society) make me say a disclaimer that I am not a medical doctor. Yup, just a mom who found a few things she likes for kids. Enjoy! Oh yeah, and if you read any of my other posts you know I always say NO SHAME or JUDGMENT to my mama friends out there. This post has a lot of OPINIONS and things that fit into my family’s UNIQUE health journey. If you disagree or have had a different experience, THAT’S totally ok!
I dread when my kids get seasonal sickness. I mean not like anyone likes it of course but at the first sign of a runny nose or fever I just hop into action to try and get ahold on it. In case I need credibility, both my kids have never been on an antibiotic and they maybe both go to our holistic chiropractor once each year if even that. These remedies WORK for our family!
The Basics
DIET: Ok, this is the dreaded hard one. Personally, after a lot of years of research and trying countless numbers of cleanses, resets, wholeness programs, etc. I’ve come to believe a few things about the American diet. First, I try my best to keep the kids off of conventional dairy and gluten. From my research and experience, both are inflammatory and inflammation is what slows the immune system down. Now, don’t get me wrong we have dairy and gluten in our house but I just try very hard to buy alternatives and use the other two sparingly. I also know that sugar is a culprit in spreading sickness so, I try my darnedest to be mindful of sugar intake. At the first sign of sickness I am very strict about no sugar at all. Yup, no frills here. It is hard to do but I really think it’s a key to overall health. We do use raw milk when we can get it and milk alternatives.
BASICS: Yes, we talk about washing hands but we also talk about how illness spreads. This year I’m using Oak Meadow’s Health curriculum and it is FANTASTIC. We have little chats about washing our hands and about how touching our face, nose, eyes, etc. can spread germs. Now, I’m not a weird person who follows her kids around saying these things in their ear at playdates. I just think learning is awesome so we start young teaching them things like personal responsibility about their health.
AWARENESS OF SICKNESS: If I can catch signs of illness right when they begin and start treatment ASAP that is my best chance of success. Signs I look for include moodiness that is abnormal, tiredness, that “look” in their eye (moms you know ha!), fever, runny nose.
VACCINES: I don’t do any with my kids. Yup, I’ll leave it at this because I am old fashioned and we don’t talk about politics, religion, or controversial topics on this site. I’m only mentioning it because it is a foundation to my family’s health journey.
ELIMINATION PATHWAYS: The colon is our bodies main source of elimination of waste and toxins. If this pathway isn't working multiple times per day, that is not good for health! Just a good thing to keep in mind for general overall health of our children and if bowels aren’t moving multiple times daily, increase fiber and water intake and begin to search out why!
Now that we got the foundation covered, I’ll go into specific remedies!
THe Specific Remedies
NUTRITION RESPONSE TESTING and STANDARD PROCESS VITAMINS: I first found this supplement company when I went to our holistic chiropractor who does Nutrition Response Testing. This is an amazing health resource. Please message me if you are local and want the name of the chiropractor we go to for this. This has been one of the most crucial aspects of increasing our family’s health. Nutrition Response Testing is where I learned a lot about how the body systems work together and about where to start treatment of issues and what food allergies I had. Every single person in my family has benefitted from this and we use this as a first step if we have a health problem we can’t figure out.
My kids take four Standard Process Chewable Catalyn everyday. Once again, just a mom not a doctor so I can’t give health advice. At the first sign of sickness, I give them Congaplex chewable and we are also a fan of Echinacea C (this is not chewable and for Gavin I sometimes chop it up and add it to a bite of applesauce to get it down) and their Children’s Immune which are chewable. There’s a lot of variables in the vitamin industry and I've found that this company is incredibly transparent in their processes and their quality is unlike any other I have tried. Check out their site for more of their information (www.standardprocess.com). My Amazon affiliate links are at the bottom of this page if you want to try the ones I recommended.
HOPEWELL OILS: I LOVE these. I won’t say much about them here because their site is a treasure trove of health knowledge. I use all the gentle blends and especially favor the children’s Breathe Easy and Immune-Support. If you google search Hopewell Oils newsletters it is a gold mine of information. I use the methods found in Strategy to Fight Colds newsletter. READ IT! It’s so good. Also, just to repeat, I have the most success with these when I start at the very first sign of sickness or not feeling good. They have a really great newsletter/article on fevers and when to treat/what fevers do when sick. I always have calcium lactate on hand as well and if a fever gets bothersome or too high I crush calcium lactate and add it into applesauce.
SWEATING: At first sign of sickness I get my kids into a bath that is as warm as they can tolerate with epsom salt. I increase the warmth in the room by making sure it’s heated up. We add 1-2 cups of epsom salt and they sweat! I one hundred percent believe in sweating as a way of detoxing and aiding the body in healing. When our kids are fighting something, we try our best to give them to “sweat” baths a day until symptoms subside. Our American culture tends to portray sweating as “gross” so we don’t have bathhouses and a culture that readily accepts this. Here is a link to a great post on the benefits of sweating.
https://www.candidaplan.com/sweating-your-way-to-health/
ELDERBERRY SYRUP: There’s so many elderberries in our area and I really believe that these berries are full of vitamin c and other antioxidants. There’s lots of recipes you can google. For mine I boil them with grated ginger and a cinnamon stick. After it is cooled I add a small amount of honey. I try to make it at first sign of sickness and we take it every few hours in the beginning of an illness and then throughout the day.
Hope you guys got some good ideas from this post. Here’s to being healthy this season!
Alyssa
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