Home Remedies for Influenza and Recipe for Shower Fizzies

Forgive me for my brevity and tardiness this week.  I am writing this still in the throes of the flu.  Hopefully a couple more days and the fever will have subsided. In the meantime, thought I would provide you with a couple of the homemade remedies I’ve used and ask if you have any suggestions to add to the list!

1. Chicken Soup with Real Bone Broth – Bone Broth is like the best thing ever to help heal a sick body (second to sleep – oh glorious, elusive SLEEP!).  Canned soup has nothing on all the minerals, proteins and healing agents that a pot of homemade chicken stock can offer.  For a great tutorial on how to make a good one, check out Kitchen Stewardship’s version here.
2. Vapor Rub Salve – Little ones can’t have menthol or camphor in their chest rubs (ala Vick’s, etc.) plus I don’t like the petroleum jelly base or any of the other weird chemical ingredients that I can’t pronounce so I make my own.  I use the basic recipe for the Sleep Salve (another must-have item) that I shared here and just modify it by replacing those essential oils with Lavender, Rosemary and Eucalyptus instead.
3. Therapeutic Shower Fizzies/ Bath Bombs – Surprisingly a lot easier to make than I had anticipated.  <>  These are awesome because you put them in the hot shower with you and the release their aroma while you steam.  Just make sure you kick it into the corner so it isn’t under direct water flow.  Added bonus: it cleans the shower floor without any effort from you!
4. Tea – Ah, glorious tea.  I like a hefty spoonful of honey in mine when I have a sore throat.  (And I totally admit to licking the spoon before dunking it in.)  My favorite sick teas are chamomile, ginger, and this new version I found at Earth Fare this week called “Cold Season Tea” containing Rose Hips, Hibiscus Flowers, Elderberry and Honeybush.
5. Sore throat pops – Mix up a batch of suckers with honey and flavor with organic essential oils like lemon, ginger, clove, vanilla or whatever else strikes your fancy.  All you really need is boiled honey (to candy temp), wax paper and lollipop sticks.  Check out a decent tutorial here.  (Always remember that babies under 12 months of age shouldn’t have honey.)
6. Salt Bath – Relaxing and detoxifying a hot bath is often what the doctor ordered for achy muscles.  Mix in a little essential oil of lavender to the salts prior to dumping them in the tub for extra relaxation.  Epsom and Sea Salts both offer different things so I tend to use a little of both.
7. Probiotics – Aren’t they always good?  I don’t know what they really do for the flu, but I am certainly making sure to get mine in.  If you end up on antibiotics, you definitely want to make sure you’re getting your yogurt/kefir/kochumba fix (or those nifty ) to make sure you don’t end up with a yeast infection.
8. Drugs – When all else fails go to the doctor, right?  Tamiflu wasn’t terribly effective for our family, but if you catch influenza within 24-48 hours of that first fever it supposedly works.  (That stuff is *expensive*, though, at $70 a pop so be careful.)  Alternating Advil and Tylonel every 6 hours also has been extremely helpful for me in keeping the fever at bay.  Followed by a dose of Mucinex to help me get up the rest of that lovely phlegm (ok, that word even written looks nasty; or is it just my fever-induced haze?).

 Recipe for Shower Fizzies / Bath Bombs

There are a lot prettier and more complicated versions of these bath bomb recipes online.  I’ve pinned a bunch of cute versions on my if you want to peruse my inspirations.  When it got down to brass tacks, though, they all have three major components: baking soda, citric acid and some sort of oil.  I wanted something simple enough that my 4-year old daughter could help with, safe enough that I wouldn’t be speed-dialing poison control if my 18-month old ate and using ingredients I could find already in the house.  Voila!

Ingredients:

• 2 cups baking soda
• 1 cup citric acid
• 2 Tablespoons Carrier Oil (Olive, Almond, Jojoba, etc.)
• Small mist-spray bottle full of witch hazel
• Hard plastic mold (ice cube tray would work)
• 10 drops each essential oils of lavender, rosemary and eucalyptus

MEthod

1. Mix together baking soda and citric acid in medium glass bowl.  (Do not breathe the stuff!)
2. In a small jar mix together your carrier oil and the essential oils.
3. Pour oils into powder mixture and mix well.  (Kind of like making pie crust.)
4. Carefully spray witch hazel onto powdered mixture until it is workable (but not wet) like sand on the beach (but not in the tide.)
5. Press firmly (read: really, freakin’ hard) into the molds.  (This is why you want hard plastic not silicone.)
6. Wait half an hour to dry.
7. Pop those babies out and you are good to go!

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You may also be interested in this “Diaper Rash Cream Recipe” or the recipe for “Cloth Diaper Detergent” or this post on “Leaving an Awesome Career to Become a Stay-at-Home Mom” or this post about “Creating To-Go Bags for Emergency Preparedness.”

Disclosures: Image credit goes to Lisa Clarke permitted by Creative Commons licensing.  I am an affiliate for Kitchen Stewardship and Amazon and will receive a small commission on any purchases you might make using affiliate links.  View my full disclosure statement here.