After we had made it this whole time without catching COVID, my daughter recently brought it home from school. It’s one thing to successfully avoid contracting it while out in the general population as I had done for almost three years, it's quite another to still be able to fend it off when your kid sneezes directly in your face as you are giving them a COVID test (which then proceeds to quickly show a positive result). Side note: Parenting, it’s not for the faint of heart. Needless to say, a couple days after that moment I also tested positive.
You know the scene in movies, where the stereotypical criminal who has been on the lam for a long time, dodging and outsmarting the police who were always one step behind, finally gets caught, and as they’re handcuffing him he looks up and says defiantly, “What took you so long?” Well, when my test came up positive the first thing I thought to do was to literally say out loud to COVID in my most belligerent, attitude-filled voice, “What took you so long?” Sometimes I crack myself up.
It had been a LONG time since I’d actually been sick with anything substantial, but ready or not, COVID had finally caught up with me, and the first sign that things were happening was that I spiked a decently high fever.
I immediately shifted into damage control mode by putting this list of natural tools into play, and I’m convinced they all were a huge help in my healing and recovery.
1. Rest/Sleep - Sleep is essential for healing, and when sick, we need more than the standard 8’ish hours - we need real, actual, lay-in-bed-all-day rest. I pretty much stayed in bed for two straight days either sleeping or just resting. As a Type-A person this is basically unheard of for me, but I knew I had to do it if I wanted to get better faster, so I did. This break gave me the physical and mental downtime my body needed to focus its energies on healing.
2. Supplements - In addition to my regular supplements, as soon as I started feeling sick I broke open nature’s medicine cabinet and dosed up on Cod Liver Oil, Elderberry, Turmeric, and Vitamin C. All of these things are anti-inflammatory and high in antioxidants, and provide vital extra ammunition for our bodies in the fight against the illness.
3. Herbal Teas - When sick we especially need the power of herbs AND extra hydration, so drinking lots of herbal tea is an incredibly effective healing tool. I drank a bunch of olive leaf tea (high in antioxidants and anti-inflammation) with added ginger, turmeric, cloves, and ceylon cinnamon (spices that are all anti-viral and anti-inflammatory), as well as apple cider vinegar, and local honey, both of which have additional healing properties. Read more on the power of herbs here.
4. Healing Visualizations/Meditations - It’s important to keep stress as minimized as possible along with a positive attitude when sick, and these two tools really helped me with that. On numerous occasions during the fever I paused and visualized a healing light entering my body and slowly moving from top to bottom, destroying COVID and bringing back homeostasis as it moved. Using visualization and meditation both helped me to feel empowered and at the same time, helped me to relax.
5. Humor - Laughter really is the best medicine. Laughing stimulates your organs, circulation, and muscle relaxation, gives a boost to your immune system, can relieve pain, and improves mood - all things that are especially beneficial when sick! I watched a lot of Seinfeld when I was sick as it never fails to make me laugh out loud, and thus, helped me feel better.
After the fever broke, super irritating nose stuffiness and a bit of congestion moved in for several days, but it was tolerable and thankfully never moved to my chest. In the end, I’m grateful that my kid recovered super easily within a couple days, and while it’s taken me over a week to feel fully recovered, I’m now just about back to 100%, and have a renewed sense of how much being sick with anything really sucks! UGH!
This experience certainly reminded me how ANNOYING and disruptive it is to be sick, even with fairly minor things. Cold-like symptoms are awful to have to deal with, let alone the pain, suffering, and major life disruption that comes with the bigger and badder illnesses.
As I always say, we can’t guarantee that we won’t get sick (as was demonstrated for me in this case!), but what we can do is everything in our power to prevent that from happening, and believe me, my motivation to be as healthy as I can be in order to avoid illnesses both big and small, has been refreshed!
But for those times when we just can’t avoid it, I am so thankful for natural healing remedies! Our bodies know what to do, we just have to equip them to do it.
I’m curious to hear about your COVID experience? Is there anything you would add to this list of natural remedies?
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