Some kind of uneasiness wakes you up with sneezing, coughing, and with an achy and feverish feeling. Your muscles hesitate to move as freely as they were before. These symptoms may also be accompanied by a sore throat and runny nose. This may reveal that you are under the attack of virus, causing you cold and flu. While cold symptoms may make you feel bad for a few days, flu symptoms can make you ill for a few days or weeks.
Life today has become very busy and virus spread through physical contacts or by breathing the contaminated air has become quite common. A number of different viruses spread in the air and water in so many ways cause minor infections of the nose and throat that result in cold. Virus causing cold enters the body through the nose or mouth or through by touch. The virus can also become airborne when a sick person coughs, talks, or sneezes and can be spread easily by contact with a person having the virus.
Self-help remedies for cold and flu
From the very early days of human existence, man has been treating his cold and flu with self-help remedies available around him. Nature has provided all potentialities to counteract such infections. Moreover, natural remedies are just as or even more effective than those that you buy at pharmacies and they do not have any side effect.
Self-help remedies of Naturopathy
1) Naturopathy or nature-cure system recommends building up the immune system of the body to fight with cold and flu. If preventing measures are taken at the very first symptoms of cold, further complications can be avoided.
Nature method suggests eating lightly and drinking plenty of water so as to allow body’s energy go toward eliminating the virus instead of digesting food.
2) It encourages drinking herbal tea, diluted vegetable juice, and soup and advises keeping away from fruit juices, dairy, coffee, alcohol, or soda. It also suggests limiting sugar intake since excess sugar intake decreases the immune system.
3) Nature cure methods of heating compress to feet and throat have been very successful from ancient days. It is a hydrotherapy treatment with a series of hot and cold applications with hot and cold towels, applied to the chest and back.
4) Naturopathy always insists prevention. Change of seasons, especially the winter with its inclement weather, cause easy spread of virus and bacteria which cause cold and flu. Precautionary measures to safeguard body will be of much help. Prevention is better than cure.
Self-help remedies of herbal therapy
5) Drink plenty of hot water infused with herbs that can relieve nose block or congestion. Drink boiled water, infused with slices of fresh ginger, garlic or black pepper to relieve cold and flu.
6) Herbal inhaling has been a successful self-help remedy from ancient days. Boil water and mix a few drops of eucalyptus or menthol essential oils. Put a dry towel over your head, lean toward the bowl and put the towel also around the outside of the bowl to keep the steam inside for inhaling. And then breathe in as deep as possible through your nose and breathe out through your mouth.
7) When the early symptoms of cold and flu are noticed, taking Echinacea drops immediately helps to dispatch white blood cells to fight the infection. This herb activates and stimulates the immune system in the body to counter any attack from both bacterial and viral infections.
Garlic is an excellent remedy for all types of nasal and chest infections such as colds, flu, and ear infections. It helps to reduce the mucous. It may also be taken with conventional antibiotics to support their action and ward off side effects. Both garlic and ginger are antibiotic and antiviral and help building up the immune system to fight infection.
9) Goldenseal is another herb commonly found in combination formulas and is easily available everywhere. It is also a potent remedy for disorders affecting mucous membranes
Self-help remedies of Aromatherapy
10) Massaging forehead, temples, chest and neck with essential oils such as Peppermint, eucalyptus, or menthol gives good relief from cold and flu.
There are plenty of self-help remedies for cold and flu. There is a saying that cold and flu can be cured in a week with medicines and in seven days without medication. Hence you need not worry or become depressed. Be sure, you can make it alright by getting plenty of rest and drinking lots of fluids.
There are some simple activities that can be used to help you stop smoking such as keeping the hands busy, chewing carrots, taking the long deep breath, drink a glass of water, or even rewarding yourself when you manage to reach the end of the day without a single puff. The first few weeks after you quit is very critical in increasing your chances to quit for good:1. Record your progress. When you are trying to quit smoking, do it slowly but steady. It is important that you set a date and time that you will begin to quit. At the mean time, keep a detail record of each cigarette that you smoke; where, when and in what conditions. This will make it easier for you to identify situations in which you smoke, and then come out with an alternative activity to replace it.2. Hold your desire. When you decided to stop smoking gradually, each time you feel eager to smoke, wait for five minutes before lighting it up. After several days, extend the delay to ten minutes. Several days later, extend it to 15 minutes, and so on. By doing this, you will began to notice that the cravings would disappear faster.3. Search for help. Whether you want to stop out of a sudden or gradually with reducing the number of cigarettes you smoke, it would better to have someone who provide support. With support from people, the result will be much different. Ask support from friends, family, or the other smokers who share your goal to quit smoking. It is not uncommon that during the first week people who quit smoking often encounter depression symptoms such as anxiety and sleeplessness.4. Drinking orange juice.Most difficult part to stop smoking is when you have to overcome the nicotine withdrawal symptom; a reaction due to the absence of nicotine. Normally it would last for one or two weeks. During that time you would experience reactions such as susceptible, anxious, confused, difficulty to concentrate and difficulty to sleep due to nicotine withdrawal. Drinking lots of orange juice would help you to overcome those symptoms. This is due to the fact that orange juice makes your urine more acidic in order to quickly dispel the nicotine from the body. However, if you stop smoking with the help of patch or chewing gum that contains nicotine, avoid drinking orange juice and other acidic drinks because those are meant to induce a little amount of nicotine into your body.6. Stay away from bars and cafes. The biggest temptation to smoke again is when you go to a bar or cafe. For lots of people, coffee and beer go together nicely with cigarettes. Therefore avoid bars or cafes for at least two weeks after you first stop smoking because there are considered as places that would influence your desire to smoke. Instead go to the library, place of worship, or other public places that prohibit smoking.
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