Remedies For The Flu

It’s true. I went to the doctor… and… I got the flu–which makes now the best time ever to do a post on remedies for the flu

I can’t even REMEMBER the last time I had the flu. I must have been really young, because I honestly thought I was going to die the other day. It’s funny, but I didn’t know what was going on…

I kept getting really hot and sweating then getting really cold. Pretty much my whole body was aching, but I didn’t know if that was from the previous couple workouts or the sickness (now I know cause I haven’t done anything physical in the past couple days). My throat feels like sand paper… and I keep having hacking coughs that would make Doc Holiday from Tombstone proud (if you got that reference then you’re awesome).

So what have I been doing? What’s my genius game plan? Actually, it’s pretty simple…

SLEEP

It’s nice not being a “slave to the man”. This means as long as I get my work accomplished I can sleep pretty much whenever I want… and I’ve been doing a LOT of that lately.

For some reason getting more sleep seems to help me recover really quickly. So I just try to sleep as much as possible. Luckily for me, before I caught this stupid flu, I was feeling REALLY tired (that might have had something to do with it?) for a couple days — so sleeping hasn’t been a problem.

If you have trouble getting yourself to go to sleep on command though, I’d recommend a little melatonin. 3 mg should do the trick for you.

Water and Tea

Water is always a good thing to drink to help your body clear junk out of it. Usually, I’m attempting to help my liver get “un-drunk” when I’m drinking a lot of water… but it works for colds and sickness too.

Also, drinking certain teas might help you too. For one, teas like green tea have anti-oxidants… although you’d have to drink a lot to get great benefits, I guess every little bit counts. But moreso because you can sip the warm teas and they’ll help soothe your throat, etc.

I’ve been hitting up the chamomile teas lately. Also, these are caffeine free and I think they even help relax you so it’s easier to sleep? That seems to be the case for me…

Less Food

This is one that some people might disagree with me about… and I don’t want anyone to take it too far… but in my experience, eating LESS food while you’re sick seems to help your body recover easier.

First off, I haven’t been hungry the past few days anyways, and I’ve had to “remember” to eat every night. Which does NOT happen normally. I’ve usually worked up a “powerful hunger” by the time dinner rolls around and remembering to eat isn’t a problem.

Here’s what I think is going on: your body spends a lot of energy digesting food… the more food you eat the more energy your body has to divert away from healing you towards digesting food. So when you eat less food you make it easier for your body to heal itself.

I have only anecdotal evidence to support this and one story from a friend’s friend. He said this guy had some cancer tumor and all the docs told him it was inoperable and that he should prepare to die. He went to a lot of docs and they all told him this. The guy goes and sees a natural medicine doctor and that guy recommends to just stop eating anything and only drinking water. And within something like 3 weeks the tumor has completely healed itself.

I’m not sure if I got all the facts of this story correct, so don’t sue me, but you get my point right? Your body needs to divert its limited amount of energy to something — and by not eating you’re telling it to focus on the sickness at hand… seems to make sense to me at least.

That said, I haven’t had chicken noodle soup since I was a kid and I think it’ll come in handy today If you guys can think of any other remedies for the flue, I’m all ears — just post them in the comments below!