Cough medicines are not only hazardous for your child’s health, they do no good whatsoever. At least in my humble experience. I wonder if they’d make a good weedkiller?

Anyhow, I just have to pass along this great information because I’ve tried it several times now, on different kids, and my mom has tried it–all with success…it’s just so amazing, I can’t not share it with you!

It all started with an email forward. As with most email forwards, there is no way of contacting the original author either to fall down at her feet and praise her blessed name or to ask her permission to publish this at my site, but I figure she probably won’t mind. Forwards being forwards, and all.

Anyway, my mil sent this to me, the Vick’s skeptic that I am…only because I’ve suffered through having it on my nostrils and throat one too many times throughout my childhood and never thought it made an ounce of difference, will all the Vick’s VapoRub survivors say aye, aye? Aye, aye.

But I could barely sleep one night due to my 3 year old’s coughing. Finally I decided to try the vaporub on her, but she was in footie pajamas and on the top bunk so I figured Vicks being Vicks, I’d smear some on her throat and chest and call it good. Half an hour later–she’s still hacking. In fact, she ended up coughing so hard she vomited.

So here I was, at midnight, cleaning her up. Since she was out of her PJ’s at this point, I went ahead and slathered some Vick’s on the soles of her feet. Followed it up with socks, clean sheets and re-tucked the exhausted little thing in bed.

Nary a cough the rest of the night. Nor the rest of the week, thanks to me smartening up and applying Vick’s before PJ time each night. And as I said, I put my 7 yo through the same ritual when she was fighting the chest cold a week later. Worked great. And ask my mom how it allowed her to get much needed rest at night during her own cold.

And now with no further ado from your’s truly: the email forward that started it all…

VICKS VAPORUB…TRY IT, IT WORKS

I wish I’d known this when my family was young during winter colds and coughs. I am going to try it myself. Share with young parents.

Isn’t life strange? When we had a lecture on Essential Oils, they told us how the foot soles can absorb oils. Their example: Put garlic on your feet and within 20 minutes you can ‘taste’ it.

Some of us have used Vicks Vaporub for years for everything from chapped lips to sore toes and many body parts in between. But I’ve never heard of this. And don’t laugh, it works 100% of the time although the scientists at the Canada Research council (who discovered it) aren’t sure why.

To stop night time coughing in a child (or adult as we found out
personally), put Vicks Vaporub generously on the bottom of the feet at bedtime, then cover with socks. Even persistent, heavy, deep coughing will stop in about 5 minutes and stay stopped for many, many hours of r elief. Works 100% of the time and is more effective in children than even very strong prescription cough medicines. In addition it is extremely soothing and comforting and they will sleep soundly.

I heard the head of the Canada Research Council describe these findings on the part of their scientists when they were investigating the effectiveness and usage of prescription cough medicines in children as compared to alternative therapies like acupressure.

Just happened to tune in A.M. Radio and picked up this guy talking about why cough medicines in kids often do more harm than good due to the chemical makeup of these strong drugs so, I listened. It was a surprise finding and found to be more effective than prescribed medicines for children at bedtime, in addition to have a soothing and calming effect on sick children who then went on to sleep soundly. Polly tried it on herself when she had avery deep constant and persistent cough a few weeks ago and it worked 100%! She said that it felt like a warm blanket had enveloped her, coughing stopped in a few minutes and believe me, this was a deep, (incredibly annoying!) every few seconds uncontrollable cough, and she slept cough-free for hours every night that she used it. If you have grandchildren, pass it on. If you end up sick, try it yourself and you will be absolutely amazed by the effects.

Mary again:

I am not a doctor! I’m just passing this info along in the hopes that it helps you and your loved ones get some much-needed sleep and relief from the coughing that commonly arises at night for cold sufferer’s. Please visit the Vick’s VapoRub website for more info on this product, and use your own good judgment from there.

Nowadays, it seems we all know someone with Celiac or Sprue Disease, aka, gluten allergies. My husband is in line for it, genetically. His mother has it, so that ups his chances by ten percent, from what I gather.

Recently I came across a recipe for an interchangeable flour mix for people who can’t tolerate gluten. Here it is for you to use or pass along…

Best Flour Mix (from the Gluten-Free Gourmet Cooks Fast and Healthy by Bette Hagman)

• 2 parts white rice flour
• 2/3 part potato starch flour
• 1/3 part tapioca flour

Make a large batch of this flour mixture to keep in a canister for ready use when flour is needed in a recipe. In a pinch, quinoa flour works well on its own. Try white or brown rice flours, garbanzo flour, and may others if you want to experiment and see what works best for you.

How many of you know someone with this allergy?

I’m on day two of a “no shampoo” experiment…

Upon browsing Mrs. Brigham’s wonderful site, I came across a link to an article on going “Shampoo Free”. Intrigued, I went and read the whole thing. Kind of raised my eyebrows a bit, but gradually I warmed to the idea. Especially since I’ve been reading warnings about toxic chemicals such as propylene glycol and sodium lauryl sulfate for a few months now, and it’s in everything–shampoo included.

So yesterday morning I gave this “no-poo” idea a whirl. You definitely should read the article for the whys and wherefores, but basically, you wash your hair in a solution of baking soda and warm water (1 TB baking soda to 1 cup warm water) and then rinse it a couple of times a week with apple cider vinegar in cool water (1-2 TB ACV to 1 cup water). And just so you know, I have to wash my hair every day. Have to, can’t stand the teensiest bit of oiliness.

Initial reaction…

I missed the suds. I missed the fresh smell. I’m an Infusium 23 gal, and still have a half full bottle on the ledge of our bathtub. I thought, there is no way my long hair isn’t going to be a tangled mess after this… And I made a mental note to be extremely careful if I put my daughters through this latest whim of mine. Baking soda in the mouth is nasty-blech, and apple cider vinegar…well, it tends to burn one’s eyes!

Good points…

I have long hair, and lose a lot of it each time I shampoo. This time I hardly lost any…and wonder of wonders, combing my wet hair couldn’t have been easier. It’s not a stretch to say that it combed through even better than when I do my normal shampoo/conditioner routine. I did comb it out carefully before washing, because with hair past my shoulder blades I need all the help I can get!

I was also worried about the smell…but there is no lingering vinegar scent…believe me, I asked my girls to sniff me several times!

And finally, my scalp has been dry and itchy lately…not to the point of flaking and dandruff, but annoyingly so. With the baking soda/vinegar method, the itching decreased significantly. Now I’m wondering if the condition was caused by the detergents and toxins in my shampoo!

Conclusion

I’ve done the baking soda/vinegar wash twice now. My hair is just as clean as it was with the store bought shampoo and conditioner. It even feels as though its had a deep conditioning treatment, very soft and moisturized. I’ll continue this for a while to see if the benefits continue or increase. Here’s hoping!

Now to figure out a good container in which to store the baking soda and apple cider vinegar! Any ideas?

I’d love hearing from you guys on this…have you done it or a similar alternative? Please share in comments!

Stevia is an awesome natural non-caloric sugar substitute available at your local health food store. And it packs 200-300 times the sweetness of sugar, so you don’t need as much. And you can use it in all your baking!

My next question is, have you heard of the dangers and side effects of Splenda? I recommend you read an article titled: Sugar Substitutes and the Potential Dangers of Splenda. The author, though very careful to remain objective, likens Splenda to pesticides. Scary.

Here’s some more info on stevia from the article. Incidentally, stevia has been used successfully in Japan for more than twenty years now.

“We’ve known about stevia in the US since 1918, but pressure from the sugar import trade blocked its use as a commodity. Today stevia is slowly gaining steam as a sugar substitute, despite similar hurdles. The FDA has approved its use as a food supplement, but not as a food additive due to a lack of studies. Stevia can be used for anything you might use sugar in, including baking. It is naturally low in carbohydrates. You can buy stevia at most health food stores and over the web. There will always be those who have a sensitivity to a substance, but based on reports from other countries it appears to have little to no side effects. For women who want to move through their cravings for sugar without artificial chemicals, stevia is a great option.”

For people on no-sugar diets, or for diabetics, or for anyone who wants to be more health-conscious–this is valuable information!

So, have you heard about stevia? If so, please tell us what you think…

For more info and The Stevia Cookbook, visit this stevia website!

Every mom has been there.

We had chiropractor appointments at 11:45 A.M. today. Before that, we picked up my oldest daughter’s reading glasses and rushed through several errands. No time for lunch at home. And the Donna Reed in me (snort-cough) didn’t have the foresight to get a picnic packed…

After the appointments we stopped at the nearby library and then finished our errand running with a trip to Wal-Mart. Of course, the whole time I’m eying my watch and realizing that lunch is going to be after 3 P.M. if we don’t pick it up in town.

Then I reasoned, the cheapest place to pick up lunch is McDonalds…but who wants to eat hormone filled and pesticide affected meat raised by unregulated South American beef producers?

Sheesh, what a dilemma. The kids were great though, I’d promised them something to tide them over, just wasn’t sure what that something would be. See, we rarely eat out. When we do, it’s because we have something to celebrate (as in: We have some money!!! Let’s eat out!!!). Taking the girls out to lunch without dear husband just almost seems mean, in our little world of hardly-ever-eating-out.

And I know I’m not the only one that can count on one hand how many times she’s skipped McDonalds in favor of a loaf of bread and cheese for hastily assembled sandwiches while caught in town over the lunch hour…so don’t feel bad for me, I don’t!

So after consulting the girlies, we steered the shopping cart over to the dairy section and picked up cheese sticks, then to the fruit/veggie department for bananas and carrot sticks which we ate on the way home.

Pretty cheap and no complaints. Three year old fell asleep on the way home, tummy full and transferred into bed like a champ.

(While the rest of us skedaddled into the kitchen and made quesadillas! Don’t worry, we saved her one…)

So here’s my questions for you guys:

1. Do you eat at McDonalds?
2. In an average month, how many times do you eat fast food?
3. What’s your grocery-lunch-fix for those days when you’re away from home and eating out isn’t in the budget?

Answer any or all! Looking forward to your comments…

I’m posting today at Writer…Interrupted, a post of encouragement for parents of sick children.

As an extension of that, I wanted to mention that there’s nothing nicer than a care package when the germies have been making their unwelcome rounds. My oldest sister stopped in last fall, during our bout of influenza, and dropped off a grocery bag of goodies including:

• individual sized squirt bottles of Sunny D
• Campbell’s “Soup at Hand”–their microwaveable “heat and sip” soups
• lip balm

My mother in law is another one for spoiling sick loved ones, only her “care packages” usually contain:

• jello or pudding cups
• gogurts (yogurt in a tube, good frozen or thawed)
• juice boxes
• Pedialyte
• half a dozen cans of varying kinds of chicken soup (chicken noodl-o’s, chicken and stars, Dora chicken noodle soup…)
• crackers
• new books or toys

And my mom still sends over a kettle of chicken and dumplings, which always seems to me, to be the best medicine of all. That and her prayers…

What traditions have you lovingly brought into your family’s healing processes? I’d love to hear about them!

An hour at the health food store is always time well spent,  and recently I enjoyed an uninterrupted Q&A session with the store manager.

Health is such a fascinating topic, unless you’re face to face with an M.D. who believes drugs are the only answer. I’m thinking in terms of autism, or ADHD, and the epidemic we have in this country of children on Ritalin, and other controlling substances.

Anyway, while there, I found this book on enzyme therapy–a  resource telling what enzyme deficiencies different problems are derived from. The author, Karen L. DeFelice, has a website www.enzymestuff.com and her book is Enzymes: Go With Your Gut–More Practical Guidelines For Digestive Enzymes.

She also wrote: Enzymes for Autism and Other Neurological Conditions. Her website has a most helpful forum.

First and foremost, this author was a mom raising two autistic sons. She was desperate for answers, and the medical community wasn’t helping. One of her sons banged his head on the wall all day long every day. The other had several different autistic issues. Today, with enzyme therapy, they’re completely normal young men. Amazing story.

I guess this mother/author did a book signing at our health food store and she told the owner that she always replied to emails from people searching for answers. It might take her a week, but she would reply in person. I really want to encourage you to get this book, read it and form your own conclusions. I’ve since ordered my own copy, and read it from cover to cover. It makes perfect sense.

I fully believe that we shortchange God by subscribing to the drug theory all the time as the cure-all when He’s provided so many natural resources for us to use instead.

At any rate, I wanted to share this find here in the hopes that it might help someone. Enzyme deficiencies can cause many problems and aggravate many more.

This is a great step in taking charge of your own family’s health.

Back when my family had the influenza, I went to “stock up” at our local health food store. In the process, I bought a book that I’ve been meaning to blog about ever since. Smart Medicine for a Healthier Child: A practical A-to-Z Reference to Natural and Conventional Treatments for Infants & Children by Janet Zand, N.D., L.Ac., Robert Rountree, M.D., and Rachel Walton, MSN, CRNP. (Mine is the 2nd Edition)

It really is an A-Z reference…it begins with a brief history/intro of each of the following: Conventional Medicine, Herbal Medicine, Bach Flower Remedies, Acupressure, Homeopathy. It then segues into diet and nutrition, pregnancy and newborns, and home safety…

But what I really appreciate is that every possible ailment your child may encounter in life is alphabetically listed from acne to whooping cough, and all the bases are covered with treatments from the methods I mentioned above. There’s even a nifty section that explains the common Acupressure points so you know how to maximize results with this form of healing.

Let’s say your child has poison ivy/oak/sumac. The section for this ailment will tell you what it is, what the rash looks like, what causes it, there will be a detailed picture of the three different kinds of leaves. There will be a list of symptoms to watch for and when to call the doctor. The conventional method will list several options from available over-the-counter meds/ointments–basically what your M.D. would tell you…then the next section will focus on herbal treatment which, for poison ivy, would be to apply aloe vera gel to the rash, and apply calendula tincture to relieve itching and help the skin heal more quickly…the homeopathy section says to give your child one dose of Rhus toxicodendron 12x or 6cm three to four times daily, until symptoms lessen. If there’s a Back Flower Remedy, it will be listed, and a specific Acupressure treatment will be recommended. And finally, at the very end of the section about poison ivy, under “General Recommendations”, many practical suggestions follow (taken straight from the book):

• Give your child homeopathic Rhus toxicodendron
• Prepare an old folk remedy by making a paste of 2 TB of sea salt and 1 cup buttermilk. Apply it to the affected area to reduce itching and promote healing.
• Soak a clean cotton cloth in a blend of 1 TB sea salt dissolved in one pint of spring water. To relieve itching, apply the compress to the affected area for fifteen to thirty minutes several times daily.
• Cold cucumber slices applied to the affected area can help dry out an oozing rash.
• Clothing that has come in contact with the oil should be washed in a strong detergent with chlorine bleach added.

I’m keeping this 556 page tome handy, and am in fact currently following its instructions for my toddler who seems to be having recurrent UTI problems (not medically diagnosed)…I’d much rather feed her blueberries, cranberry juice, and odorless garlic softgels than give her antibiotics, and so far so good…

Fascinating subject, and so important: preserving and promoting the good health of our children. Do you have a favorite resource to recommend?

“Candida albicans is a yeast that naturally grows in the intestinal tract. Though Candida usually should not be a problem, if the normal flora (good bacteria that help our foods break down properly) in the intestinal tract gets out of balance from the use of antibiotics or other medications or stresses, Candida has the opportunity to grow and get out of hand.

The resulting imbalance can cause different symptoms in different people. Some of these symptoms can relate to behavior and the ability to learn.

So many children today have been prescribed multiple rounds of antibiotics for colds and ear infections. These antibiotics can throw off the natural balance in the intestinal tract. The antibiotics kill the good bacteria in the intestinal tract while killing the bad bacteria that is causing the illness.”

The above definition came from Dr. Mary Ann Block’s book, No More Ritalin: Treating ADHD Without Drugs.

My mom, mother-in-law, and other wise older women have passed on to me the tip of giving my children Acidophilus (Lactobacillus acidophilus) capsules when they’re on antibiotics. This simply replaces the good bacteria that the antibiotic is killing off.

Dr. Block also states:

“An overgrowth of Candida can cause many health problems. In addition to the ones that traditional physicians see such as thrush and vaginal yeast infections, it can cause systemic problems throughout the body, which are often seen in immune compromised individuals.”

She recommends The Yeast Connection by Dr. William Crook, M.D. in which he reports that he’s helped numerous children with their ADHD symptoms by treating the yeast in their digestive tract.

Consider also, that the Candida yeast feeds on sugar and carbohydrates. A child who has been on antibiotics and the typical American diet of refined foods/sugars is probably full of this bad bacteria and ripe for a variety of health problems.

Nutrition is so important. And such a gentle fix for health problems compared to drugs, which so often only treat the symptoms without curing the cause.

Could your problems, or your child’s, simply be the result of a nutritional deficit?

I received the first of four research books I’d ordered on PTSD, a subject I find fascinating fortunately, because the heroine in my book seems to be suffering from it. It’s been interesting to see the statistics on who is more susceptible to react drastically to trauma…women more than men, younger people rather than older, people with no social support, people with past substance abuse issues.

Many people suffer from the debilitating flashbacks, their hearts race, they sweat, they relive the trauma, they can’t distinguish between the actual event and their episodes of panic. Doesn’t your heart just break for them? Whether they’re Vietnam Vets, rape victims, abuse victims, disaster victims such as the survivors of 9-11…

Aside from book research, I have to wonder why God puts these things on my heart? Am I someday going to be glad for the frame of reference these psychological books are giving me? I’m still at the point in my writing, where any potential for it to have outreach seems surreal. I’m on the verge of thinking of it as more than a hobby, so I do still wonder if writing is the vehicle God knows will land me at a certain place at the right time? Know what I mean? What if I’m not ever going to be published, but will someday be in a position to need counseling, or to be a counselor?

At the writing conference I recently attended, Deborah Raney half-joked about how in the beginning stages of plotting out a novel, you’ll be smacked right down in the middle of real-life research. Heaven help you if you’re writing about a plane crash! I haven’t had anything earth-shattering happen, but perfect snippets drop in my path like inspiration from God. Suddenly every article, every conversation, every sermon–comes alive and pertains to key parts of my story.

So I have to wonder about this interest in post-traumatic-stress-disorder. I really fell into it when revising my first draft of this novel. I’d alluded to the things my heroine was suffering, without knowing anything about PTSD.

At any rate, I know educating oneself is never a waste…so I’ll just enjoy the ride and see where God takes me, and possibly the book, along the way.

~~~~~~~

BTW, one of the PTSD books I wanted was $60 plus at amazon.com and I got it for .99 cents at half.com! Isn’t that amazing?