The family apothecary…

Amanda posted about her beautiful family apothecary the other day. I thought I might share with you a little of what has changed for our family since last year. I first began on my journey into homeopathy mid year last year after reading some posts by Lora Lynn. (She cracks me up. I love stopping by her place.) In a post titled “Pills, Potions, and Eyes of Newt“, no less. (Seriously, ya’ll.) It piqued my curiosity, and then I began exploring and educating myself.

As you all know, I was ill from Nov. ’10 to about August ’11. It was/is now titled ‘severe upper respiratory distress’–which is to say, they never knew quite what was wrong, just that I couldn’t breathe. As time went on, tests revealed a host of heretofore unknown allergies to penicillin and sulfa antibiotics, as well as multiple food and environmental allergies. The stinky thing about it was that I was seriously sick- and suddenly most modern medicines were out of the question for me. The only options left to me were very hefty IV antibiotics, which meant a hospital stay. To me, that just wasn’t an option.

I was too sick between Nov’10 and about mid-March ’11 to really do anything besides sleep, work, and survive- and pop the pills. Lots of them. I was basically on steroids (to help my lungs) for that entire time, with small breaks- we’re talking serious immunity depression so that those durn things could work. Somebody looked at me funny, I’d catch their germs. Every sniffle my kids had was a walk on the wild side for me; we never knew which germy attack would send my body into shut-down mode. I barely escaped hospitalization no less than three times between January and March.

Come March, I began a more homeopathic, natural approach. Diet was one of the first things- I went to an allergen free diet (no sugar, grains, known allergens) for right at a month. I also began at the same time a supplement regimen fitted to my ‘respiratory distress’ desgination. While it wouldn’t be August until I was truly healthy again, I noticed a huge change within two weeks and it went steadily uphill from there.

But back to the family apothecary. All of my kids seemed to take after me. Before this year,  it was not uncommon to have a couple of rounds of ear infections, a few strep throat rounds, and non-stop colds. As a family, the kids and I would basically become sick in November with your garden variety cold, and would be sick well into March or April. Someone was always sick.

Will you believe me when I say that we have been sick once in the last three months? And it was a funky crudy cold thing, and it was only five or so days? I can’t believe it myself. What has changed is our approach- and what we use. This is our ‘winter lineup’- what we grab first. So far, it’s been all we’ve needed.

The menthol camphor mist (think Vicks)- we use this in the shower or bath- sprayed into the steam. We make sure to get the bathroom warm and steamy and then bring the sicko in. Both J and I have found that if we feel a head cold coming on and spray this in the shower that morning, we’ll head most of it off right at the pass.

For cold, sinus, respiratory anything- Elderberry syrup. (The Gaia on the left is the adult formulation, the Eldertussin on the right is the kids version.)

Olive leaf complex- Elise suggested this to me on Facebook after that cold we had, and we added it to our ‘attack’. It’s a keeper. The one she showed me had not only olive leaf but also oil of oregano and something else, but this was the one I could find. This stuff is amazing on sore throats. We have not had one strep throat incident since. And the few times I’ve had a sore throat, this would clear it up significantly within hours, and the sore throat would be gone in a day or two versus a week or more. It’s unreal.

We use the sinus relief pretty regularly with the allergies. It’s a saline solution, and very gentle. I used to be on commercial-grade, prescription strength nose sprays for years, and I’ve had no need of them since I switched to this. (And I don’t even need this like I used to.)

The Temp Assure is our newest addition- we been seriously attempting to reduce our need for synthetic grade meds like Tylenol and the like as much as possible, so we’ve been giving this instead (when warranted) versus a children’s ibuprofen or the like.

I’ve been learning so much about the homepathic approach since Lora Lynn sent me down the rabbit hole last year, and I can’t thank her enough. I have so much more to learn.

(I’m no doctor, or anything. This is just works for us. Please use these at your own discretion.)