Changes in the Eastern weather!

I heart Vicks to this day. My mom would rub it on my chest and then pin an old clean diaper around my neck. I have no idea if it did anything or not, but that smell still means comfort to me.

Lynn Siprelle, Editor

Keeping warm and well rested will also help you fight off the bugs better. Remember the warm pototoes in the coat pockets of the Wilder kids on the way to school in the winter? Loved that one.

My mom also followed the "keep the body warm inside and out" preventative measures during cooler weather on the age old principle that getting too cold gives you a cold. We'd have malt-o-meal in the mornings on school days and she'd make her Apple-Raisin-Cinnamon-Oatmeal on Saturday mornings, a huge batch, which is still my favorite breakfast food.

My Grandmother and mother would have us put our heads over a pan of steaming water with Vicks or Mentholatum in it and a towel over our heads to clear our noses. I don't recommend this with little ones, I couldn't bear the steam when I was in early elementary but by junior high I could handle it.

My stepdad's parents were old timers and when you started to get sick you put hot salt or rice packs on the head and drank hot rum toddies. A lot of old timers in the midwest swore by the recuperative powers of likker. I'm not sure why they worked, but the hot cocktails often did. Mom refused to dose us in this manner for some reason, go figure.

Anhata
www.familynaturally.com
Your Family's General Store, Naturally

At the first sign of a respiratory woe, I start drinking echinacea tea by the gallon. I also swallow whole cloves of raw garlic - that's a Dr. Andrew Weil trick. I swear by these interventions.

I seem to have gone straight from Singapore rhinitis to a head cold back in the UK. All I want to do is sleep for hours. Sleep and plenty of fluids are some of the most basics ways of fighting these bugs if you can. Most of the rest will just ease the symptoms, though when the symptoms make you feel like you're dying that's usually not a bad thing! Changes in weather seem to trigger problems like this. We still have temperatures of over 20C (about 70F aparently) but the mornings are much colder. Since we spent all of last year's Autumn and Winter with one bug after another (result of moving continents ad starting new school) I was hoping things would be better this year. Apparently having a trip back to SG at the end of August wasn't a good idea though!

for symptom easing we use Vick at night and an antihistamine in the morning to make it through the day without sneezing non-stop. Liquid Lemsip is so much better than tablet form too, or honey and lemon with soluble paracetamol works, a dash of glycerin if you have a sore throat. There must be as many cold remedies out there as there are people, if not more!

vitamins and handwashing are the best preventives of course...

Kerri.

Most regulars know this already, but for U.S. lurkers:

Lemsip=(more or less) Theraflu
paracetamol=acetaminophen