I am always more susceptible to illness after the holidays. So it did not surprise me when I caught a recurring sickness about two weeks after Christmas. My baby had it first, and my husband thought he may have brought it home from the ER. I thought I might escape, but after eating too many delicious, but not so healthy, holiday foods, I was out of luck.

It started with congestion in the sinuses, trading off with an almost constant runny nose. When the drainage goes down your throat, it hurts. Then you develop a cough. The mucous gets thicker and just keeps coming and coming out of the sinuses. Sound familiar?

I did some of my natural treatments, and was surprised when they did not work as well as I thought they would. I’m going on 3 weeks with it now. I haven’t been perfect at taking all my natural tools, and I can tell that stress can make it worse. I talked to several of my friends that live far away, and they told me they were fighting a similar illness. One of them said that her daughter almost ended up in the hospital because of it.

There have definitely been some nasty sinus and respiratory bugs going around all over the place. The scary thing about this one, is when it seems the symptoms are dying down. It comes back with a vengeance. So here I’m going to share with you some things that I found worked the best.

First of all, these sick bugs can be very tenacious. Just when you think you are getting over it. It can still be hanging out in your sinuses and sapping your energy for an additional two weeks or month. So it is very wise to plan a protocol for several days more than you think. You might need just to make sure you get it out of your system, …all the way.

When I got sick, I felt like just eating normal food kept giving me more congestion and made it harder to sleep at night. So I stopped eating my normal foods and just switched to grapefruit juice, fruit smoothies and chicken broth with soup for dinner. This is crucial, because eating heavy foods, dairy, animal products, breads, just makes your body produce even more mucous, and you’ll be up in the wee hours of the morning trying to breathe! So get my recipes for sickness busting drinks HERE.

My favorite tools for boosting my immune system against this recurring bug are:

• Essential Oils (immune and respiratory blends)
• Elderberry (Research shows it’s good for influenza too! Reduces time sick from 6 to 2 days!)
• Echinacea herb
• Immune and respiratory herbs
• Vitamin D
• Zinc Tablets

Seriously, I’ve have to use all of these to get this bad boy under control, and I’m still doing everything so it doesn’t make a come back. So, if you are fortunate enough to not have experienced this recurring sickness yet, prepare your remedy cabinet with some natural tools just in case. Chances are, you’ll need them sometime over the next year, if not now!