Allergies Again

Oh wonderful flowers blooming and filling my nose with congestion.

I've found better ways to deal with allergies than the tea and honey I used to drink.

My new favorite friend: Immune-Tea by Birthsong Botanicals. I love the taste of this tea! And the smell cannot be beat... Cookies. I can't tell you why but it smells like cookies. You can find it here at their etsy shop http://www.etsy.com/shop/BirthSongBotanicals

To add a boost of vitamin C I've been putting elderberry extract to the tea. It adds a nice fruity flavor and accents the rest of the tea.

To top it off I've been putting a few dried mint leaves and local honey in the tea. Not only do they help soothe sore throats they do wonders for the immune system when fighting off that nasty pollen.

What's your favorite way to fight allergies?

Stay green,
Yasha

The Natural Remedy

Over the years I've come to trust modern medicine to help with all sorts of things. I guess the more I go down the "runny nose aisle" as I like to call it the more I become distrustful of it, though. When I see 15 little boxes that only help with a handful of symptoms and 15 other little boxes that help with the rest I kinda get disappointed with how medicine has become way too common.

Don't get me wrong, when I have a cold I'm the first one to ask for a bottle of cough syrup. I don't want to suffer any more than the rest of us. However, since I first became pregnant in 2008 I have had a 3 month break where I wasn't either breastfeeding or pregnant. That alone has limited what medications I can take. With those limitations I have looked into more unusual methods to relieve my symptoms.

So just what have I come up with?

Elderberry.

So just what can this little berry do? Well according to some doctors doing a double-blind study over in Europe "a complete cure was achieved within 2 – 3 days in nearly 90% of the elderberry-treated group [...]" Sounds like pretty good results to me.

Now I love my local hippies as much as the next person so when I first was told about Elderberry syrup I totally blew it off. I mean if this stuff was so great why do we have NyQuil? It wasn't until I stumbled upon this research article that I actually put some thought into it.

So if you'd like to try something new or just wanna check it out. Try asking for Elderberry syrup next flu season.

Check out the full article here: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/field/jimr/2004/00000032/00000002/art00005