Fighting a Cold Naturally

**”Star Blanket River Child” by Brightblack Morning Light really captures that “cold medicine” psychadelic feeling and clocks in at ten minutes long – a song that seems to last forever, much like the common cold.**

It’s cold season again, which means that we’re all stocking up on tissues, hand sanitizer, vitamin C and zinc. When the weather gets cold, we tend to spend less time outside and confine ourselves to warm, indoor spaces. As a result, schools are a hotbed of illness, as are daycares, your workplace, hospitals, grocery stores, etc. 

Some people get one or two colds every year, whereas others don’t seem to get sick at all. I had my first cold in probably eight years, just a few weeks ago. This may sound incredibly crazy, but I was excited to have a cold. Yes. You read that correctly. I was excited to be sick. Obviously, I don’t enjoy being sick and when I’m sick, I seem to have temporary amnesia and can’t remember a time when I didn’t sneeze, have a stuffy nose, or cough uncontrollably. Regardless, it was exciting for me because it meant that my immune system was finally healthy. 

Western medicine perpetuates a culture of fear around illness and generally sees disease as a problem to be solved or fixed. Sometimes this is 100% accurate, particularly when someone has a serious disease like cancer. Oftentimes, though, you just need to slug through a cold or flu and build immunity. When your body reacts to an illness, it means that your immune system is healthy and robust – it has the resources to actually fight the virus. If you eat nutrient dense food, get rest, drink more fluids and GET OUTSIDE, you will fight your infection faster and feel better mentally. This all sounds completely obvious and easy to do, but most people continue to go to work and ignore the signals that their body is sending them: slow down and heal.

For those of us with children, a cold or the flu seems to last forever. It usually enters the house with one person and slowly takes down the whole house. If your child has Sensory Processing Disorder, a simple cold becomes debilitating. No matter how hard you try to rationalize a stuffy nose or body aches, a hypersensitive child will be convinced that they are dying. You can laugh, but it’s absolutely true. My kids were unable to blow their noses until very recently. The feeling of mucus in their nose was terrible, but not as bad as trying to get it out. Remember, these kids are incredibly aware of everything on and around them – any sort of discomfort will appear magnified, but is completely valid. If, on the other hand, you have a child who is hypo-reactive, they won’t even notice that their nose is running or will seem totally fine, despite a hacking cough and persistent sniffles (which might drive you completely crazy). 

Thankfully, there are some natural solutions for colds and the flu that work really well for hypersensitive kids (and anyone else who avoids cold medicine). Here is a short list of what I do or have on hand: