Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Common cold

5 Winter Immunity Boosters

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Most adults catch between two and four colds a year and the average infant or child catches from six to ten colds a year. That means, in our lifetimes, most of us will have a cold or flu for between two and three years. That’s a lot of Kleenex.

Immune Boosters

The good news is, nature offers some powerful immune-boosters. You may want to have these on hand this winter.

Garlic

Garlic has antibacterial, antibiotic, and antifungal properties. Allicin is garlic’s defense mechanism against pest attacks, and in clinical tests, it also prevents the common cold. In one study, volunteers were randomized to receive a placebo or an allicin-containing garlic supplement every day between November and February. The garlic group reported 24 colds compared to 65 in the placebo group. The volunteers in the garlic group also recovered significantly faster if they did get infected.

You don’t have to buy a supplement. The tastiest way to take garlic is to eat it. Raw is best. But garlic’s active ingredients are also present in cooked food.

Lemons

Lemons are loaded with vitamin C. One lemon contains anywhere from 50 percent to 80 percent of the vitamin C you need in a day.

And if you come down with a cold or virus, one study confirmed that hot lemonaid (or another hot fruit beverage) relieves runny nose, cough, sneezing, sore throat, chilliness and tiredness.

Elderberry

Elderberry is a popular herbal cold remedy in Europe. It’s getting a lot of press this flu season, because in clinical tests its flavonoids compare favorably with the antiviral Tamiflu in treating the H1N1 flu . You can buy over-the-counter elderberry syrup at most health food stores. Or you can harvest your own elderberries or buy them in the bulk section of your local health food store and make your own syrup. (Recipe below.)

Ginger

Ginger increases circulation and brings warmth to the body. It excels at quelling nausea, motion sickness, and dizziness. Many people also insist it can knock out the common cold.

Chicken Soup or Miso

Chicken soup and miso are full of vitamins and minerals. At least one study confirmed that chicken soup mitigates the symptoms of upper respiratory infections, possibly by reducing inflammation. Plus, the taste, smell, and warmth of these nourishing soups just make us feel good.

Herbalist Rosemary Gladstar recommends adding any or all of the following immunity herbs to the broth for a bigger boost of vitality:

  • Astragalus
  • Dandelion root
  • Burdock root
  • Echinacea root

Simple Immune Boosting Recipes

Here are four of my favorite recipes for the cold and flu season. 

Lemon and Garlic Quinoa Salad

(Adapted from Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair)

Salad

1 c. dry quinoa
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 and 3/4 c. water
1/2 c. chopped carrots
1/3 c. minced parsley
1/4 c. sunflower seeds

Dressing

4 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 c. freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil
1 to 2 tbl. tamari or shoyu

Rinse quinoa and drain. Place rinsed quinoa, salt, and water in a pot. Bring to boil, reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer 15 to 20 minutes until all the water is absorbed. Let stand for 5 to 10 minutes uncovered, then fluff with a fork. Place quinoa in a large bowl. Add carrots, parsley, and sunflower seeds. Mix. Combine dressing ingredients and pour over quinoa. Toss. Serve at room temperature or chilled.

Hot Ginger Garlic Lemonaid

2 cloves garlic
1 tbs. grated ginger root
Juice of one freshly-squeezed lemon
Honey, to taste
Hot water

Put ginger root in a tea ball or tea bag. Place garlic, lemon juice, honey, and tea ball or bag in your favorite coffee mug. Pour hot water in. Cover and steep. Drink very hot.

Miso

(Loosely adapted from Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair)

3 inch piece wakame
4 c. water
4 tbs. light or mellow unpasteurized miso.
2 scallions, thinly sliced, for garnish

Any or all of the following

1 potato
1 carrot
1/2 c. chopped bok choy
5 sliced shitake mushrooms
1/4 lb. firm tofu, cut into cubes
Handful of immune-boosting herbs: astragalus, echinacea root, dandelion root, or burdock root.

Soak wakame in small bowl of cold water for 5 minutes. Put herbs in a large tea ball or bag.

Put water (and potato, carrot, and herbs if using) into a pot and bring to a boil.

Tear wakame into pieces, removing the spine. Add wakame to soup. Lower heat, cover pot, and simmer 15 to 20 minutes, until vegetables are tender. Near the end of the cooking time, add mushrooms, bok choy, and tofu cubes if using, and let simmer a few minutes more.

Remove soup from stove. Dissolve miso in a little warm water. Remove tea ball or bag. Add miso to broth. Stir well. Ladle into bowl and add scallions for garnish.

Elderberry Syrup

(From Rosemary Gladstar’s Family Herbal*) 

1 c. fresh or 1/2 c. dried blue elderberries*
3 c. water
1 c. honey

Place berries in a pan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 30 to 45 minutes. Smash berries. Strain mixture through a fine-mesh strainer and add 1 cup of honey, or adjust to taste. Bottle the syrup and store in the refrigerator. It keeps for 2 to 3 months.

*Make sure you use blue elderberries, not red ones. Never eat uncooked elderberries.

(Editors note: This is an updated version of Stay Well: 5 Winter Immunity Boosters and Winter Wellness Recipes, originally posted in November 2009.)

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The Wisdom of Winter

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Winter is the time of promise because there is so little to do — or because you can now and then permit yourself the luxury of thinking so. – Stanley Crawford

Oh February. I always find this month a little challenging. Short days. Rain. Fog.

Moreover, this February, a host of coughs, sniffles, sneezes, and most recently fevers have descended on us.

Around now it’s tempting to long for May, for the first strawberries and garden-fresh greens. For throwing the windows open in the afternoons and planting the garden and walking barefoot in the grass.

But the other day, when I emerged from our fevered nest, I was greeted by a handful of yellow crocuses dotting our neighbor’s yard. And I felt a wistfulness, not for spring or summer, but for the quiet, reflective days of this season, which is so quickly departing.

These days, we seem to think we can outsmart winter. We can arm ourselves with our electric lights and flu shots and vitamin drinks and continue to go, go, go.

I’m no different. I had all sorts of plans for February. A big project. Outings. Busy, packed days.

But so often winter demands a certain amount of stillness from us.

This month has brought me lots of quiet afternoons tending to sick family members, watching movies, knitting, and reading.

As crummy as it feels to be sick or to see those you love sick, I see wisdom in all of this. Slow down, winter tells us. Be still.

In the Mountain Rose Herbs blog this week, acupuncturist Dylan Stein advises, “Let’s take these last few weeks of winter as an opportunity to rest, to meditate quietly and to prepare our bodies for the bursting energy of spring.”

He recommends ingesting nourishing foods like beans, root vegetables, seaweeds, dark leafy greens, and walnuts, and gentle warming spices like cinnamon and ginger.

Likely, that’s where you’ll find me this week: resting, sipping on spice tea, and reflecting on the wisdom of these seasonal cycles of stillness and vigor.

My favorite spice tea:

1.5 quarts of water

2 teaspoons turmeric

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon grated ginger

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Combine and boil for 10 to 20 minutes. Strain.

Add honey to taste, if you wish.

Enjoy!

What’s your favorite winter food or drink? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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Does Hot Cocoa Cure a Cold?

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Are you sniffling and sneezing? If so, you’re not alone. It seems like our entire city has a cold right now. At our house, we’ve been resting,  drinking lots of hot lemon and ginger drinks and broths, getting out in the sunshine,  and trying to remember all of those other time-tested cold remedies.

Then, I remembered some research I read awhile ago about a substance that beats codeine when it comes to knocking out a cough – cocoa. That’s right, I recalled a reason to consume chocolate. I felt better just thinking about it.

Then my skepticism kicked in. Didn’t it sound a little too good to be true? Could the confections industry have anything to do with this research into these miraculous health benefits of cocoa?

So I decided to dig up the research again. It’s the theobromine in cocoa that researchers pegged as more effective at keeping hacking at bay than codeine. “Theobromine works by suppressing vagus nerve activity, which is responsible for causing coughing,” a “Science Daily” article about the 2004 study explained. The researchers isolated the theobromine from cacao beans for the study and used it in doses much higher than I would get in, say, a velvety cup of hot cocoa. But still, a large mug could only help.

I was on my way to prepare one, when I glimpsed another “Science Daily” article, this one from 2006. “Scientists at the University of Manchester’s North West Lung Centre have found that codeine – a standard ingredient in cough remedies — could be no more effective than an inactive placebo compound at treating cough,” it read.

Wait a minute, so codeine – the gold standard of cough suppressants that all other cough suppressants are judged against – may not actually, um, suppress coughs? Where does that leave my beloved theobromine?

In general, I’ve been feeling discouraged about medical studies these days. I love to read them, especially when they reveal reasons I should eat chocolate, go for walks, garden, or do any of the other things I enjoy doing. But I’ve started wondering if reading nutrition and medical research might actually be harmful to our health.

Remember when we were supposed to be loading up on antioxidants? Well, according to new research, those oxidants we were fending off with high doses of beta carotene and vitamins C and E actually serve necessary functions in our bodies like fighting toxins and battling cancer.

Remember how we were supposed to be loading up on Vitamin D, because all of us were hopelessly deficient? Well, according to a study commissioned by the U.S. and Canadian governments, “Vitamin D and calcium supplements are unnecessary for most people and may be harmful to some.”

Does hot cocoa cure a cold? #health

If these findings are troublesome, Sharon Begley’s January 24 piece in Newsweek “Why Almost Everything You Know About Medicine is Wrong” is downright disturbing. She writes:

If you follow the news about health research, you risk whiplash. First garlic lowers bad cholesterol, then—after more study—it doesn’t. Hormone replacement reduces the risk of heart disease in postmenopausal women, until a huge study finds that it doesn’t (and that it raises the risk of breast cancer to boot). Eating a big breakfast cuts your total daily calories, or not—as a study released last week finds. Yet even if biomedical research can be a fickle guide, we rely on it.

But what if wrong answers aren’t the exception but the rule? More and more scholars who scrutinize health research are now making that claim. It isn’t just an individual study here and there that’s flawed, they charge. Instead, the very framework of medical investigation may be off-kilter, leading time and again to findings that are at best unproved and at worst dangerously wrong. The result is a system that leads patients and physicians astray—spurring often costly regimens that won’t help and may even harm you.

Of course, I couldn’t help but read the rest of the research on cocoa. It turns out “the health benefits of epicatechin, a compound found in cocoa, are so striking that it may rival penicillin and anaesthesia in terms of importance to public health … ” Chocolate consumption may also lower blood pressure, prevent heart failure, lower stroke risk, and boost brain power.

Or, hey, maybe not. But I decided to stew over it while making some hot cocoa, not as much because of its purported health benefits, as because I remembered something from my childhood. When my sister or I got a sore throat, sometimes my parents would get us a little ice cream to soothe it. I’m fairly certain ice cream does not cure a sore throat. I’ d guess that quite a few health gurus would argue sugar and dairy worsen a cold. But those ice cream treats made being sick feel not quite as bad.

I whipped up the healthiest hot cocoa I could manage, and it was a huge hit with my son. I think there’s something to the cocoa cure.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Does hot cocoa cure a cold? It couldn’t hurt to experiment. #health #remedies #chocolate” quote=”Does hot cocoa cure a cold? It couldn’t hurt to experiment.” theme=”style1″]

Here’s the recipe, in case you’re feeling a cough coming on.

Healthy hot cocoa

If you liked this post, check out more of my popular posts about health:

What’s your favorite cold remedy? Are you a believer in the cocoa cure? I’d love to hear from you.

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Stay Well: 5 Winter Immunity Boosters

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Lemons_b

If you’ve turned on a radio or television, picked up a newspaper, or logged onto the Internet in the last month, you know it’s flu season. Like many Americans you might be trying to decide whether you and/or your kids should get vaccinated against the H1N1 and seasonal flu this year. If you’re looking for some antidotes to the widespread fear circulating this season with the coughs, sneezing, and sniffles, go here, here, or here.

Whether you decide to get vaccinated or not, boosting your immunity is always a good idea as the weather gets colder. After all, the influenza viruses are hardly the only bugs out there. Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer write in “Does the Vaccine Matter” in the Atlantic this week:

We think we have the flu anytime we fall ill with an ailment that brings on headache, malaise, fever, coughing, sneezing, and that achy feeling as if we’ve been sleeping on a bed of rocks, but researchers have found that at most half, and perhaps as few as 7 or 8 percent, of such cases are actually caused by an influenza virus in any given year. More than 200 known viruses and other pathogens can cause the suite of symptoms known as “influenza-like illness”; respiratory syncytial virus, bocavirus, coronavirus, and rhinovirus are just a few of the bugs that can make a person feel rotten. And depending on the season, in up to two-thirds of the cases of flu-like illness, no cause at all can be found.

Most adults catch between two and four colds a year and the average infant or child catches from six to ten colds a year. That means, in our lifetimes, most of us will have a cold or flu for between two and three years. That’s a lot of Kleenex.

The good news is, nature offers us some powerful immune-boosters. You may want to have these on hand this winter.

1. Garlic

Garlic has antibacterial, antibiotic, and antifungal properties. Allicin is garlic’s defense mechanism against pest attacks, and in clinical tests, it also prevents the common cold. In one study, volunteers were randomized to receive a placebo or an allicin-containing garlic supplement every day between November and February. The garlic group reported 24 colds compared to 65 in the placebo group. The volunteers in the garlic group also recovered significantly faster if they did get infected.

You don’t have to buy a supplement. The tastiest way to take garlic is to eat it. Raw is best. But garlic’s active ingredients are also present in cooked food.

2. Lemons

Lemons are loaded with vitamin C. One lemon contains anywhere from 50% to 80% of the vitamin C you need in a day.

And if you do come down with a cold, one study confirmed that hot lemonaid (or another hot fruit beverage) relieves runny nose, cough, sneezing, sore throat, chilliness and tiredness.

3. Elderberry

Elderberry is a popular herbal cold remedy in Europe. It’s getting a lot of press this flu season, because in clinical tests its flavonoids compare favorably with the antiviral Tamiflu in treating the H1N1 flu . You can buy over-the-counter elderberry syrup at most health food stores. Or you can harvest your own elderberries or buy them in the bulk section of your local health food store and make your own syrup. (I’ll include the recipe in an upcoming post of favorite winter wellness recipes.)

4. Ginger

Ginger increases circulation and brings warmth to the body. It excels at quelling nausea, motion sickness, and dizziness. Many people also insist it can knock out the common cold.

5. Chicken Soup or Miso

Chicken soup and miso are full of vitamins and minerals. At least one study (Chest 2000) confirmed that chicken soup mitigates the symptoms of upper respiratory infections, possibly by reducing inflammation. Plus, the taste, smell, and warmth of these nourishing soups just make us feel good.

Herbalist Rosemary Gladstar recommends adding any or all of the following immunity herbs to the broth for a bigger boost of vitality:

  • Astragalus
  • Dandelion root
  • Burdock root
  • Echinacea root

Of course, winter wellness isn’t just what we ingest. When I look back at the winters where I came down with one cold after another, there were some glaring imbalances in my life. (Why are these so much easier to see in retrospect?) Either I’d signed up for too many college courses, I was miserable at my job, or my family had over-scheduled our days. Rosemary Gladstar sums it up nicely in her Family Herbal when she writes that wellness comes from:

Finding your joy in life. Exploring your passions. Getting up from your chair and moving your body. Wiggling. Eating good food. Playing.

Those are probably the best immunity boosters. But it never hurts to have a little chicken soup on hand just in case.

What are your tricks to staying well when the weather gets colder?

Stay tuned for  an upcoming post of my favorite winter wellness recipes, including lemon garlic quinoa salad, miso, hot garlic lemonaid, and elderberry syrup.