Well…it’s that time of year again. Sick season. I hate being sick because it just throws everything off for the week! I thought I took all the precautions to prevent it from happening to me, but it hit me hard this past week. I’ve been waking up with my throat hurting and feeling dry for the past couple of days, and I woke up this morning at 3:30, tossing and turning for almost two hours. Ugh. I didn’t want to accept the fact that I’m sick, but dang it, I’m sick.
So, since I’ve finally accepted it, I thought I’d share what I do to fight it! I really like to take a natural approach towards getting better with natural ingredients. It’s like what Hippocrates says, “Let food be thy medicine.” When I’m sick, I am really cautious about how I treat my body, especially what I put into it. Here below I have listed the five things I do when I’m sick that I try to do everyday! I want to note here that I try to spread these things out throughout the day instead of all at once in order to ensure I’m taking care of myself all day long!
Drink That Tea
If you would’ve asked me if I liked tea when I was 18 years old, I would’ve told you heck to the no, coffee all the way! But as I’ve gotten older, teas are essential for when I don’t feel that great. To be honest, I didn’t like it at the beginning, but I forced myself to drink it because I knew it was good for me. After getting into that routine, I’ve really come around to the taste, especially after adding a little bit of honey. When my throat hurts and I’m congested, I aim for making teas that have key ingredients to help soothe and also help fight it, like ginger and peppermint. My favorites are Yogi’s Ginger Tea, as well as their Immune Support with Echinacea, and the Simple Truth Organic Peppermint Tea. I’m running low on my supply and I need to run out and get more, but these are essential for me when I’m sick! I try to drink a cup around noon time, as well as an hour or so before I go to bed.
No Hardcore Workouts
One of the most important things to do when I’m sick is not doing any hardcore workouts. I had to learn the hard way that trying to be active while being under the weather doesn’t help anything, and my body just needs to slow down and ease off vigorous forms of exercise for a bit. It stinks having to sit around all day and not getting your body moving, but it’s essential to rest and try to not push your body to do something it’s not up for. Even though intense workouts are out of the question, one thing I really like to do when I’m sick is to do some yoga. I enjoy doing Yoga with Adriene on YouTube because she has a great variety of yoga practices that meet any need. I don’t try to do any long sessions, 20-minutes is all I need in order to feel a bit better. It’s a light exercise, but it allows me to stretch out my stiff body and move it in a less intense way.
Drink My Wellness Drink
I’m all about drinking warm liquids when I’m sick. Instead of doing just the standard lemon water when I wake up in the morning, I like to add apple cider vinegar, turmeric, and honey. The honey is great for my throat, the turmeric is an anti-inflammatory, and the apple cider vinegar is just a holy grail item for everything in my book! I’m going to dedicate an entire post this in the future because not only do I drink this when I’m sick everyday, I also try to incorporate it into my everyday routine!
Take Echinacea
The one supplement that I like to take when I’m sick is Echinacea. It’s supposed to help naturally with immune health and has worked wonders in my family when we were sick growing up. Although there are back and forth articles about whether Echinacea works or not, I feel like it’s really helped me each time I’m sick or started to feel a sickness coming upon me!
Watch the Sugar
Like I said before, I think it’s really important to be cautious of what you put into your body when you are sick. While there are ingredients that can help, there are also ingredients that can make it worse, added sugar being one of them for me. I’ve found that eating a lot of foods with sugar in them can increase the amount of mucus production I have, prolonging me being sick. So even though it’s hard, I try to stay away!
And that’s what I try to do everyday when I’m sick!! I wish I could say doing these 5 simple things immediately heals me, but that’s just not the case. It’s all about consistency and patience! I constantly have to remind myself that taking these steps is helping me in the long run to feel better. I do want to acknowledge that this is what works for me and that everybody is different, so find what works for you! I’m just making suggestions to try and help! Thanks for reading this post today, and if you are sick too, I hope you are feeling better, and if not, I’m so envious of you right now!!!