An old standard for coughs

Many people probably remember your parents slathering Vicks VapoRub on your chest when you were a kid and had a cold. It was supposed to help open your airways so you could breathe, and also help a cough. I remember the product but don't remember it really doing much.

Now that I'm older and much more interested in finding alternative solutions to ingesting tons of pharmaceuticals, I'm willing to give just about anything that goes outside the body a try, within reason, of course. A while back I stumbled onto some advice for treating a cough that I thought was a little crazy.

Vicks VapoRub. On your feet.

Seems strange, right? Well, when my kids brought home a lovely little cold from school a few weeks ago, I started to get desperate. Like most Lymies, what is minor for them (about 3 days of stuffy noses and congestion) is a major setback for me. I'm now into my 3rd week with this cold, and it varies from minor nuisance to fevers and coughing that keep me awake. Even the standard OTC meds weren't doing much to help the cough, and we all know how important sleep is (you can find my post on sleep here). If it's disrupted when you're already under the weather, you don't have much chance of getting better.

One night while I was getting ready to cough my head off (all the coughing was actually causing migraines!) before going to bed, I suddenly remembered that crazy advice about the VapoRub. So I did it. I put VapoRub on my feet and then put on socks.

You know what? I coughed a whole lot less than I had the previous night.

I'm not saying this is any kind of miracle, but it certainly helped. I still have that nasty little cold, and I'm still coughing. But at least the VapoRub is helping me sleep better while I try to get over the rest of it. I'm guessing it has something to do with being absorbed through the feet. I don't really know. I'm not even going to question it. If it works, it works!

And just for the record, I did put it on my chest like the directions say. It was definitely more effective on my feet.

Sleep Solutions

Sleep is such an important part of good health. Everybody knows you're supposed to get 8 hours of sleep a night, but do you know why? There are several things your body does while you're sleeping that contribute to good health, and they occur during different parts of the sleep cycle. If you're not getting the full 8 hours of sleep or your sleep is interrupted, then you're not getting all the benefits you should be getting from your sleep.

The REM state makes up about 25% of your sleep. It occurs about 90 minutes after falling asleep, and recurs about every 90 minutes, getting longer later in the night. During REM, energy is provided to your brain and body. If you wake up frequently throughout the night or sleep in short spurts, you're missing out on gaining this energy because you don't enter the REM state often or long enough.

NREM makes up the other 75% of sleep and is comprised of 4 stages. Stages 3 and 4 are the most restorative sleep where you are most relaxed, but you have to get through stages 1 and 2 first. Again, interrupted sleep causes a problem. Tissue growth and repair occurs during stages 3 and 4. For Lymies, missing out on this repair stage makes an already big problem in our bodies even bigger.

My doctor diagnosed lack of deep sleep as one of my issues a while ago based on blood test results. He initially put me on Ambien, but I didn't like that as a long-term solution so I've been using more natural solutions to help me sleep better. Here are some suggestions you can try:

• Try to go to sleep and get up at the same time every day. This helps set your body's internal clock.
• Make sure you sleep in a dark room and keep the lights low if you have to get up during the night.
• Use relaxation techniques like deep breathing or muscle relaxation. The old advice of counting sheep actually has merit. I sometimes use a variation of this exercise combined with breathing. I keep a mental picture of a bunch of balloons in my head. On every inhale, I imagine pulling a balloon from the bunch, and on every exhale I imagine the balloon floating away and I count it. If you lose track of what number you're up to, don't fret. Just start back with the first number that comes into your head. The idea is not to see how high you can count but to let your mind relax with the image and counting, blocking out all those other thoughts that keep you awake at night.
• Melatonin - Many people report being able to fall asleep better while taking melatonin. It helps regulate the sleep cycle and is a calming agent. According to WebMD, melatonin has many other uses as well. I have tried it in the past, but it was never enough to make a difference in my sleep, though perhaps I will add it again to see if I can get any of the other benefits.
• Valerian Root - Valerian root is calming and has been reported to reduce the amount of time it takes to fall asleep. I currently use valerian root and have found some benefit to it.
• Revitalizing Sleep Formula - This is a product I have used off and on for several years, and I do believe it helps me not only fall asleep faster, but also fall back to sleep if I wake up during the night. I also notice my dreams are more vivid when I take this, indicating I'm reaching stages 3 and 4 of NREM. It includes valerian root along with other natural ingredients, so check to make sure you are not taking too much of any one ingredient if you try multiple remedies.

As always, talk to your doctor about any changes you plan to make. My suggestions are only to provide a personal experience and your situation may vary.

Hopefully, with the right amount of rest and relaxation, your body can function as it was meant to. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my recent changes in sleep aids will help me along on my journey to health.

Strep Throat Natural Remedies

I'm fairly sure strep throat is something everyone can relate to. We've all had it at one time or another in our lives. And everyone rushes to the doctor for the rapid strep test (and maybe a regular test if the rapid test is negative) and then a bunch of antibiotics. Like most illnesses, the key is how your immune system handles it, and strep throat is no different. For us Lymies, strep throat, or the side effects of it, can linger around for quite some time because our immune systems aren't capable of fighting them off.

The other issue for Lymies is something that most people take for granted: to antibiotic or not to antibiotic, depending on what treatment we're currently on. Sometimes we're already on antibiotics, but strep gets through anyway and we need to add an extra med. But sometimes we're in a rest period, where we need to let our bodies heal from all the antibiotics we've previously taken, and adding a new med during this time isn't really the best option. Of course, sometimes we have to do it anyway, because what's worse than strep throat? Strep throat that's untreated.

Up until now, like most people, I thought antibiotics was my only choice when I came down with strep throat about a month ago. As soon as I saw those tell-tale white spots on my throat, along with the other symptoms, I rushed to the phone to call my doctor.

But on the way to the phone, I spotted my Cowden products, and I took a second to think things over. There was a reason my doctor didn't want me on antibiotics right now. And I had no idea if Cowden would get messed up if I threw a bunch of antibiotics into the mix. So I thought, "I can give it a little while. I'll do some research first." I figured there had to be a way to get rid of strep throat naturally - something I'd never really thought about before.

What I came up with was that there are quite a few natural methods to get rid of strep. I'm not going to list them all because it would take forever, but I'll just tell you what I tried and why.

Essentially, I used Organic Raw Apple Cider Vinegar and Oil of Oregano. My reason for selecting these two was that I'd already read up on their benefits for other reasons (Lyme, candida, general wellness, etc.) and knew they worked for certain maladies. As it is, I've been taking oil of oregano regularly for a while, and when I feel a cold or something coming on, I up my dose and it gets rid of the illness quickly.

So what did I do? I increased my dose of oil of oregano and started taking apple cider vinegar. I had already been taking oil of oregano twice a day, so I went to three times a day. I gargled with some apple cider vinegar mixed into warm water, and I also drank some apple cider vinegar mixed in water twice a day. In addition, I occasionally swabbed some oil of oregano directly on the white spots on my tonsil (yes, it only infected one, and I think starting this regimen quickly kept it from ever getting to the other tonsil) using a Q-tip.

The results? Pretty amazing. The strep still had to run its course. The white spots did linger for a little more than a week, but they got smaller each day. The sore throat was manageable. It never got out of hand. I did spike a fever about four days after starting the treatment, but a fever is a way of your body telling you it's fighting something off. I took that as a good sign that my immune system was working against the strep. I kept up the oil of oregano and apple cider vinegar after the symptoms and spots disappeared, just to be safe.

In the end, I'm pretty confident that I did have strep even though it was never confirmed by a doctor, and that I beat it without antibiotics.