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 Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 9:17 pm
Medicine
Healing Yourself Alright! My mother and grandmother, and great grandmother ect. taught the younger generation of daughters in our family (Including me) this. There is stuff here I keep suprising my friends with, they don't believe it often until I force it down their throats out of worry for their health.
Being an adult is often knowing lil odd tricks to deal with things like *shrug* illness. I mean you arn't in grammer school anymore, "Missing a day" in the real world costs you alot, and by no means is to good for your general health, nor the health of /others/ for you to force yourself to attend work when you are sick. Thus the quicker you get well the better, and since doctors don't prescribe medcine for say, colds (until they are proven to be bacterial not viril which can take AGES in itself), flu (though I reccomend if you can getting a flu shot early on!), and other such "Basic" problems.
Needless to say, learning how to "Never be sick" like you parents seemed to be, is key to being an independant adult. Here are some fixes that you probably never even thought of. Be prepared I'm going to be teaching you A LOT.
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Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 9:43 pm
Preparing for Illness
What to have before you get sick Right so if you let illness sneak up on you, you are already behind in the battle. Afterall it's harder to get better when you can barely move -> remember your mom and or dad is no longer there to make food for you...nor anything else really. Your on your own. Scary isn't it? Its my hope that my guide will help ease such fear and make you capable of keeping your own health in line.
So how do you prepare? This will seem like common sense and I will explain things as we go, the whys of certain things, but for starters you want the following:
1] Your Doctor's and Emergancy contact's number on your cell's memory/ and or on speed dial.
- When you are sick, your memory is hindered (as your bodies main focus is giving all energy to defense to help you fight the illness) if you can remember your doctor's/emergancy contact's number while sick, consider yourself amazing.
2] Medicine Cabinet
- Go to Natrual/Herbal medince post to find out what should be in this and why..
3] Kleenex (soft non-lotion)
- The reason you don't want lotion is because it will mess up how your nose feels (it will put lotion on your nose) and if you've been good to your nose there should be no reason for it. Soft will do just fine as it wont irratate or scratch the skin (think soft toilet paper, which if your poor also works XD)
4] Access to hot water
- In many forms. from shower to tap. This will be explained in "Natrual/Herbal Medicine" as well
5] Spare sheets/blankets
- When sick your saliva will /somehow/ get onto them (trust me from sneezing to coughing to just drewling, it WILL GET ON THERE) and when sick you don't want to exhaust yourself doing laundry, and sleeping on "infected" bedding will make it harder for your body to fight the illness (as there is a source outside of your body that you are now in contact with at least daily).
6] Your insurance policy card in your wallet at all times
- a JIC precaution, as some illnesses require a quick 911 by someone and if you are out of it enough to go to ER, you are too out of it to deal with insurance policies to take care of you. If its in your wallet someone will find it, and then you will be ok. Mind this only works if said wallet is on you.
7] Money
-Extra cash is really good to have around if you need to suddenly buy something to help you get better. (and to help with the deficit due to one loss day of work if your employed full time)8] Easy to make food-You think I'm joking. Some of this should already be in your medicine cabinet, but its good to always have easy to make food in case you are too weak to go and get food, too out of it to order, and otherwise to lazy with illness to want to bother to do more than shove something in the microwave and hit the minute button three times. When sick you NEED to eat. Most people FORGET THIS. Oh and yes, all diets get screwed when your sick sorry. I don't care if your low carb or any of that jazz, you eat things to make you better when you are sick, not to help you lose weight.
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Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 10:40 pm
First Warning
Early Symptoms You know these. You really do. You just probably don't reconize that you know them, and even if you do, you probably have little to no idea what to do with that information.
This is where I come in *strikes pose* Your first defense is reconizing that in a few days you WILL BE SICK. And like wise you can start to attack the problem properly.
Colds/Flu
1) A scratch in the back of your throat "Tickle" Its back there, and you know wish your tounge could reach that spot just so that you could scratch it. Congradulations, thats the wrong thing to do. Yes massage it with your tounge, but don't let that keep your focus. Train yourself to think "Hmm, I might have caught something and its starting to take root." This is a very common symptom, esspecially for colds/ strong allergies. In a day or two your sinuses will start to act up and you will have a decent cough.
1a) So you now know this, so what? First you want to have kleenex on you now, because from START TO FINISH you NEVER want to let your snot drain down your throat past the opening in your mouth. This will stop it from getting to the rest of your body and making you feel miserable (fever ect.) you need to get it out of your body as FAST as you can, blowing your nose often and hacking up the rest. Allergies people, are a small crack in your defense that a cold can exploit, so even if its "Allergies" you need to treat it like the start of a cold, while keeping in mind that "Anti hystimines" are also your friends.
2) Tired. So you didn't feel that tickle, in fact your sinuses havn't even twitched. So why is it that you are so tired now? You are eating/drinking right (If not you are more than likely malnurtritioned or dehidrated, so look to those first, and YES if you experiance a drop in energy due to a diet you NEED to stop that diet and find another, because its hurting you). Such exhaustion should be experianced in the "I want to be awake to do this, but I have no will drive or energy to consider it" This doesn't apply for things you probably are being lazy about (and you know what they are, if you think for jsut a moment "WTF" about being tired, then its not laziness)
2a) This is considered the sudden sloth notice. It means your body noticed something you couldn't consiously, and is putting up defenses. The BEST THING TO DO is to let yourself rest. Don't think that you are just being lazy and try to force yourself to move on, listen and REST. Take it easy if you have to get something done, don't exert yourself to doing what you normally do. At this point its good to consider maybe hot liquids just to start your body on the healing process before the illness progresses.
3) Fever. somehow you wern't tired, never got that tickle, and you find yourself with a fever. Themometers are helpful to confirm how high your fever is. 99+ F you are staying home.
3a) Yes you are sick my friend, you may not FEEL it yet, but the fever is enough to keep you IN BED, or resting heavily. Just because your body didn't order the "Tired" onto you, doesn't mean you don't need it.
3b) Fevers are tricky, they follow no means of logic, and how you get rid of them, natrually makes no sense. (PS, if you can break a fever before you "Feel" anything else, you are likely to get well much faster, as the fever is there to weaken you defenses wink ) So how do you break them? You cover yourself in blankets. You make your room WARM, you take a hot shower and dry off immediatly after words. Simply, you make yourself hotter. I know it makes no sense. You do this however, and I will explain it in the "Natrual/Herbal Medicines" section in detail for you.
4) The Sneeze/ Cough The Japanese have a good rule, "Sneeze once someone is talking about you behind your back, sneeze twice and you might have a cold" Sneezing and coughing are natrually reflexes your body has to keep out "Bad" things from entering your body, an irratent, smoke ect. Rapid or "Deep" coughing is the hardest to reconize. If you feel your coughs are less in reaction to your enviroment and more to your throat, you may be sick, if you sneeze twice and have alot of snot accompany it, you need to be riding your body of that fast.
4a) Sneezing/coughing is not only a defense its a cleaning action. Your body can "Catch" bad entities in mucus and snot. The only way out for both is your mouth and nose. (If you swallow you release them into your body) So be mindful of "Good coughing.sneezing" opposed to "Bad coughing/sneezing" (see NHM)
Malnutrition/Dehydration
Dieting. Forgetting to drink. Oh the pain it causes. Let me explain. Your body is like a CAR. only by far more complex. It needs fuel. The right KINDS of fuel. If you keep out part of the fuel, your body wont work properly, and when your body isn't working properly, it makes you feel sick!
Your signs are:
Dizzyness
Sloth sleepy
Hard time focusing on ANYTHING (vision and concentraion)
Being air headed and spacy.
Stomic convulsions. (minor stomic cramps)
Sweating
Dry mouth
Weak "Heavy" limbs
If you know your dieting, or if you don't drink water as your main fluid source and can't think of two other times that day you drank a significant amount (fountains don't count), and you are suffering from two or more of the above you need to 1) sit down 2) have a nice low salt meal/snack with the largest drink you can find.
DEHYDRATION IS NOT OBVIOUS! The higher the altitude the MORE you need to drink. The more arrid the climate the More you need to drink.
People have collapsed in front of me due to dehydration, and they never realized they were until that point.
Diets have safety mechinisms to usually help control your diet so you don't loose nutrition, but some fad diets will not have such a safety mech. If you feel that your diet is taking too much from you, its not safe. I reccomend visiting IVillage, their diet area is comprehensive and will help you get onto a healthy diet track along with giving you tips to help stay with that track wink
Such as "Losing one-half to one pound per week is very realistic. Don't drop your calorie intake to below 1,300 calories because it would be hard to get all the important nutrition that you need" didn't know that? now you do.
The reason why I put in alot on diets is that if you are rapid losing weight, it also makes you more sesptible to becoming ill, and is significant to your health.
---------------------------
The above are things with symptoms, there is more to deal with then these but they don't come with nice early warnings. smile
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Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 11:08 pm
Natrual and Herbal Medicine
The stuff you OUGHT to know, but probably don't YAY time to learn something! Like, Why you mom/dad gave you all sorts of funky stuff when you were sick, and made you do odd things, and WHAT THEY ACCTUALLY DO FOR YOU!
Lets start with the
Natrual Remedies
1) Bathing - Germs get ON your body, not only within, BATHING is a good way to kill those germs, and give your immune system an additional burst. ALSO Bathing is often done in warm water, the STEAM is good esspecially for illnesses that effect breathing. For this sake Showers are often best. Even if you clean yourself and just stand in the shower until the hot water is gone, its good for you. When done bathing have a warm dry clean towel ready to dry off with, and get dry and warm quick. No air drying your hair while sick, towel or blow it dry. Cold water + being sick = worse WHEN YOU ARE PREVENTING THE GAIN OF LICE TAKE LESS SHOWERS THEN NORMAL. (lice like clean hair/skin, go fig.)
2) Wash your hands as often as possible Yes to prevent others from getting sick, but to also prevent germs you expelled from your body from getting back in when you eat or cough or sneeze again. (Note where your hand is in most of those cases)
3) Fever You want to make your body WARM, as warm as possible, and here is why! When you have a fever your inside tempreture is HIGHER then the outside tempreture. This means that you feel cold. When you feel cold, your body trys to make itself warm. This increases the fever. When you feel warm, your body cools itself off. You need to warm your body up so that it cools itself off, thus breaking the fever.
4) Hot liquids. - Imagine all the good that nice hot shower does, and inside your body! Warm liquids. This seems common sense but WHY? Well for one most bacteria can't live in hot tempretures. Hot liquids warm your body up, and make a nice WARM enviroment for the bacteria. You also get a nice steam in your mouth from the warmth that will help you breathe. The thicker the better, to coat your throat as to not scratch it (think of your nose~ same thing) Thus why chicken noodle and Tomato soup are favorites. Its also why TEA is good for you (hot that is).
5) Your heat points - When sick you don't want to lose body tempreture or have it fluxuate more than nessicary. It is for this reason your head, your feet, your neck, your upper arms and upper legs need to be fully covered. These are the points of your body where you lose the most body heat. When in bed, pull the covers up to your chin, wear a turtle neck, abandon those flip flops at home. Wear pants instead of a skirt. Remember socks, ect. Doing this will acctually help your body heal faster. Durring winter cold weather or rain storms, keeping these parts of your body covered will also help prevent illness.
6) Water - If you drink what you are supposed to daily (which almost no one does), you will acctually be less likely to become sick, so drink up!
7) Salt Gargle - you take salt, you add it to luke warm water. Then you take the salt water mixture and put it in your mouth, making it fall to the back (NO SWALOWING!) Gargle for about thrity second and spit. Congrads you just did one of the most simplistic things to help your throat not sweal almost shut while sick!
Herbal Remedies
1. Mints - Mint is acctually a good herb, but you want it in its infused state (Liquid or hard candy form) It can be found in this form in anything from cany canes to toothpaste to Tea. Mint candy canes were origanally put on christmas trees to be eaten after the large christmas feast, as the oil helps ease stomic cramping, and stomic acid over acting. The oil is what does this. The menthol in the oil as well acts like your halls cough drops, but on a more tollerable level. Drinking mint tea or sucking on a mint candy, or even brushing with mint toothpaste, helps ease digestion and coughing, and breathing problems and sinuses acting up and burning in the deep throat. Neat huh?
2. Chammomile - Its a daisy wanna be plant. It also comes in TEA form (infused state -> also seen in soaps) Chammomile is a realxing herb, it calms your body, and when you are sick and are finding it hard to rest and relax, a nice cup of chammomile tea will do it for you. It will also help you sleep more deeply. Chammomile also has a calming effect on persons with minor ADD and ADHD, and can help control symptoms of both.
3. Echanesia Cure all. If you have a cold or a flu and you take Echanesia PROPERLY, it will make you better. It is like medicine. You CAN build a tollerance to it, and its VERY easy to do so. You do not have Echanesia (one cup of Tea) more than frequently for three days in a row, you gradually need to take yourself off drinking it, and even if you are not fully better, there IS A TIME WHEN YOU NEED TO NOT TAKE IT ANY MORE FOR THIS ILLNESS. The reason is you'll find that with one glass you feel much better, and you'll want to continue to take it until your illness is all gone, which is a BAD IDEA. Your period is four days. The first two days have 3 glasses if you need it. (how you tell is taste, so long as it tastes utterly DELICIOUS take it, once it starts tasting bad, stop, but for ANY glass you NEED TO FINISH THAT GLASS. The next two days one or two as needed, after that, NO MORE. NONE. sorry. This will allow you to take more at a later day. And as always when you no longer need it, just stop then. Don't force yourself to continue for four days unless you really need to (four days is for "I can barely move my body I'm so sick" Illnesses)
4. Lemon and other Citruses. - Lemon is special. But as for all citruses, Vitamin C boosts your immune system, its your white blood cell's food, and without it, your body is put at risk. Orange juice is best for "Pre illness" boosting of immune system. But once sick, you want hot lemon cider. Or if you have no bloody idea what Hot lemon cider is let alone how to make it, hot Lemon tea with a cinnamon stick and honey will do you fine. This is for throats. Lemon tea and cider will clear up mucus problems FAST, it is NOT meant to coat (although the cider is nice and thick...) thus add honey to help soothe your poor throat.
Your Medicine Cabinet
1. A box of each of the above herbs in tea form. (tea bags prefered) and BTW this is Herbal Tea, which really isn't tea at all, its an herbal infusion, but its made like tea so people just call it tea, and so will I. Because trust me, when you go to a supermarket asking for where the "Lemon herbal infusion packets" are, no one will be able to help you. I suggest Celestial Seasonings to provide these as they have the LAREGEST selection of herbal teas. Some with combonations meant to strengthen already underlying strengths of herbs!
2. A bag of mint candies. (sucking on somthing is good for colds, it eases your need to cough constantly and thus will save your throat from being cut up)
3. Basic Advil and tylonol or what ever you take pain relievers/ blood thinners/ muscle relaxents. If you need the scientific terms for the above two (if you are utterly cluess as to what your countries equivilents are or you are poor and need to buy out of brand name, ask and I will supply.
4. Cans of Tomato and Chicken noodle soup, maybe a bag or cup or ramen too.
5. Thermometer.
6. Tissues.
7. Cup to heat soup/tea in.
8. Honey cinnamon and lemon (for tea)
9. Easy food.
10. If you have allergies, allergy medicine.
11. Other cough syrups or pills or sprays as you know previously help.
12. Cough drops (your choice!)
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Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 11:38 pm
For a small note if you have allergies and NOTHING seems to work: Quote: Try a cup of Mullein leaf tea 3 times a day. You should be able to buy it at your health food store by the ounce. Make it like your going to brew a cup of regular tea. 1 teaspoon herb to 1 cup of hot water. I got this from the Health boards.com.
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Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 11:06 pm
[Lots of homework tonight guys sorry! I will reserve this and one more post, but then let you ask questions, like if you have a specific illness you want to know about, or a pain/discomfort anything, I'm only doing BASICS here, not everything (Gods that would be so much...) so if its not here, ask, I may know something about it.]
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Posted: Wed Sep 13, 2006 11:09 pm
[LAst reserved, and for clarification and disclaimer, I am no nurse, I'm not medically certified, This is FOLK medicine, not real bio chemics. once again, the "Duh" stuff that you do on your own.
So! Ask Questions!]
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Posted: Fri Sep 22, 2006 12:30 pm
I get headaches. Bad ones. Constantly. And no headache medication, whether OTC or prescription, ever works. Do you know of any herbs that help stop headaches or (better yet) help prevent them, by chance?
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Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 7:57 pm
Hi Kat!
No I don't know of any herbs other than chammomile (relaxing) that might help.
The thing is your brain is a muscle. All muscles require water, so I would acctually suggest you drink at least a glass of lukewarm (room temp) water. (Cold will irratate it so no cold, warm, so long as it isn't hot is good as well)
A nice hot bath or shower will also help relax you.
Now if its behind your neck or eyes, its a stress headache and the best thing to do for those is lay down with a wet/warm washcloth over your eyes and behind your neck.
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you but I did want to check to see if there was anything else first smile
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Posted: Wed Mar 07, 2007 11:46 am
On dehydration:
There actually is a rather easy way to tell whether or not you're getting enough fluids. Just pay attention to the color of your urine whenever you go to the bathroom. Ideally, you should be having to go several times throughout the day and your urine should be clear or very pale yellow. Darker yellow colors indicate dehydration especially if you've been running a fever lately.
Other people I know also observe the changes in their skin. Take two fingers and pinch up the skin on the back of your hand. If it springs back into place, your hydration levels are good. If it sticks together or is sluggish to get back to it's original position, you need more water. Personally, this method has never really worked for me. My skin always returns to it's original place in about the same amount of time. I think it may work better for people that have a slightly lower amount of body fat.
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