Saturday, January 30, 2010

Ailments

We have been ailment-free for a few weeks...until now. Sadly, I have come down with a sore throat and now a full-blown cold. Boo!

I did some googling to get ideas for at-home remedies of my sore throat. I found a couple I thought were worth sharing. Some suggestions seemed to be a bit out there, with questionable ingredients. I felt like I was reading the ingredients for a witch's brew and not a simple remedy for a sore throat!

I haven't had luck with permanent relief from the sore throat, but this one gave me a couple hours of relief:
1 TBSP lemon
1 TBSP honey
1 cup warm water
Mix and sip before it gets cold. Sounds easy enough, so I tried it. It's the same ingredients for when I make tea (except for the tea part, of course); it tasted good. The honey did a good job of coating my throat for a while.

This one was nice, too:
Raspberry tea
Hot water
Honey
Add water to tea bag/leaves. Steep for 10 minutes. Remove bag/leaves and add honey til very sweet. I don't know why the raspberry tea is supposed to be used. It didn't seem any more effective than regular tea, but it was Caffeine Free which was helpful since I drank it in the evening. And I'm nursing my youngest, so I'm pretty sure she was glad it was caffeine free as well!

I have not yet tried this one, but it received very good reviews online:
1 cup milk
1 TBSP butter
1 TBSP honey
Heat together and drink while warm/hot.

Hot milk does not exactly appeal to me, but everyone that commented online said it was surprisingly delicious and worked better than anything they'd tried. Looks like tonight I'll be trying it out for myself!

I bought the Equate brand (Wal-Mart) sore throat spray just to save a couple bucks; it was $2.00 less that Chloraseptic! It works just as well, I've found. Save yourself the money and buy generic.

We were hoping to keep the illness-free era going, but it has ended at our house. My oldest has been sneezing and blowing her nose all morning. Looks like the sickness will be around for a while. Tonight I am making chicken noodle soup and hopefully some homemade rolls. I have zero energy but homemade things are so much better when you're sick.

Time to go spray my throat and put the water on for tea...