(4/5) Keep A Cold Short & Sweet – Congestion & Cough

Cold Wet Socks for Congestion Relief 0:00

So let's go to the fourth piece of the handout for congestion. So, let us go into the forth piece at the hand out for a congestion, congestion and I put a cough in there too, because we often think of nasal congestion when we think up being congested, but I also wanted to play to that the congestion that we have in our lungs too. That is often in the form of a I think of these as the mosquitoes of a cold and flu. They're annoying and persistent. So I would love to offer you some tips and tricks for getting rid of congestion.

The first piece that I'd like to introduce you to are cold wet socks. It sounds terrible, right? But it's incredibly helpful. Cold wet stocks are an age old naturopathic technique for decreasing congestion in the head and neck. So what you do, what I recommend first is getting the feet warm. This might be something to pair nicely with your Epsom salt bath. Get the feet warm, take a hot shower so that it's not as much of a shock to the system and you have some heat to build with already. So get the heat warm and then find your thinnest pair of cotton socks that you can.

Something very thin, very small. This is the piece that will get wet with cold water. You turn on the cold from the faucet, soak your socks, get them as wet as you and bring out the excess water put these on your feet. And the just cold tap water is perfect. Cold tapwater comes out about 52 degrees, which is plenty cold. You don't need to put them in the freezer or put in an ice bucket or anything. So cotton socks, get them wet with cold water. Put them on your feet and then grab your thickest pair of wool socks and put them ontop of the wet socks.

This will help to lock in the cold and will also simultaneously help your body warm up the the cool socks too. So once you have your socks on, go to bed, get your warm sweater, your worm leggings, and rest. Your body will be working to warm the socks up. That's where the magic happens. So we've got something cold and wet at the bottom of our body. So instinctively, our bodies thinks there's something down there that needs our attention, and it draws a lot of the blood from the head down to the feet.

This helps to decrease the congestion in the sinuses, the nose, even the throat and the lungs. and you go to sleep. If you can keep them on through the night, you'll wake up, they'll be dry, because that's how magic works. And I wouldn't be surprised if you feel better the next morning. Your throat might feel, better congestion might, feel. I usually you only really need to do them maybe two nights, perhaps three nights. The warning here is the hardest part about cold, wet socks is, the motivation to do it.

Supporting Coughs and Moving Mucus Out 3:28

You're already tired. Your already don't feel good. you might even be chilly. So the idea of putting cold wet, socks on your feet might sound absolutely unpalatable. I promise your body will thank you. Be sure to get your, feet nice and warm beforehand. Cause that will help to, to make the, motivation piece a little bit easier. So cold wet socks are tried into ancient naturopathic technique for helping with the congestion. Some of the other pieces that I put on here are some soothing herbs for different types of cough.

One piece that I want you to think about, we're coming back to the suppression versus supporting piece. Thinking about an anti-congestion medication or a cough syrup. What these are doing is they're pushing the congestion deeper into the body. They're the cough deeper in the lungs. This isn't what we want. What we'd want is for the pieces to come out. If you have a cough, it's usually because there's mucus in lungs and the bodies trying to cough it out, so if you can, Apologize to your loved ones or people around you.

Make some loud coughing. Get the mucus up and out. Spit it out if you can. As much as you try not to swallow it because it doesn't do your body any favors. If you cough it up out, that's helpful. You can continue blowing the nose, getting things out of the nasal passages. That's what our body wants. It's trying to get rid of this muus. So when we take an anti-congestion or an anticoff medicine, it's pushing things deeper. So one of the things that I'm always looking for in my patients, especially for acute conditions, meaning acute that it hasn't been around for very long.

It's rapid onset and pretty rapid to leave, is as things move up, they are on their way out and that's a sign of health. Think about this. Think about if you get sick and it starts in the lungs, you have a cough, and then it moves up. The cough goes away, but now you a sore throat, And now, have some nasal congestion. This is a great sign. That's exactly what I want to see with my patients, because that means the body has moved it from the lung up, it's moving things towards the nose and on its way out.

that's what we want. Think about the opposite. If you started, oh it just started with a sore or sore sinuses and congestion. But now I have a sore throat. And then a couple days later, you know, my sinusses aren't really bothering me anymore, but I had this terrible cough. that means it's moving in the reverse direction. And this is not a sign of health. That means your body is moving on the opposite way and we want to support the lungs, support throat to move things out instead of down. So some of the herbs that I'd like to show you are where we get into the more unconventional pieces, things that you might not have heard of.

I wrote down some specific herbs for different types of cough. Now, for me, I typically get a wet cough. It's usually very mucusy and I'm wanting to cough a lot out. I know that other people might experience a dry cough, it's just a tickle. There's nothing to cuff up, but it is dry and annoying. So the herbs that I have here are specific for each of those different types. So the first one that I'd like to introduce you to is called kella. Kella is specific for dry coughs. You can find it in a tincture or capsule form, but it's specific to those tickling cough where you're not coughing up anything but the tickle is there.

So keller, herb, It can find it in Tincture or Capsule, usually on, I sell them at my Medicinary online, so if you would like some recommendations,

Herbal Remedies for Dry, Wet, and Congested Coughs 7:35

please send me a message. I haven't quite seen it at, you know, grocery stores or drugstores. Herb shops would definitely have them. Botanical medicine shops, would defiantly have it. So it's worth asking there. For those wet coughs, the ones that there's a lot of mucus, whether the mucuss is green, yellow, or just clear, for wet cuffs, I really like Hyacinth. Hyasth is incredibly antibacterial, antimicrobial and it helps to it's not suppressing the mucus, which is the important piece. It's helping to express the mucous more.

So for wet coughs, you might notice it just feels easier to cough things up once I've taken the hyacinth. That's a great sign. that's exactly what we want. it is not going to necessarily get rid of the cough, but it will support the body to make it easier for the coughing to come out and up and gone. So the coughs are something we want, not for a long time, perhaps a day, maybe two days in full force, but we don't want them for long. That's why we take the herbs to help get them up and out, supporting the body's symptoms already.

The last one is called OSHA, and this is an incredible herb. Out in nature, I've never seen it myself, but you see black bears looking for OSha, looking this herb, scraping it off of a bark because it's very antiviral. It's a little bit of antibacterial too, And it is specific for congestion. So if you're feeling congested in the nasal passages and the sinuses, this can help to decrease congestion, Osha. Same thing, tincture or capsule. I usually see it more in tainture form, and it's got quite a bitter taste, a very astringent taste.

Astringence meaning it soaks up mucus and liquid. So that's the form that I like for osha The last piece for congestion is something that's probably tried and true, something you've heard of before, but I'd just like to remind people about it, is a neti pot or a nasal pure pot. Neti pots are, if you haven't seen it it's a small little tea kettle that you place distilled sterile water in, as well as some saline solution. You place the tea kettle into one nostril and tilt your head to the side and you're coaxing the water to go up through one side of the nasal passage and

Nasal Rinses with Neti Pot and NasoPure 10:20

down through the other. You might even feel a little bit of that saline coming into your throat too. They're all connected in the back. So that's a great sign. The salines soaks up solution as well. It soakes up mucus, soks up extra fluid and it's incredibly powerful. it works really well, especially for nasal congestion. Another brand that I've been using instead of a neti pot is called Naso Pure. Same thing, I have no affiliation with this company, but I like it because it's a small squirt bottle.

and you don't have to tilt your head. Instead, you just tilt the bottle. So you place the tip of the bottom in your nostrils and just angle it to the nice lines that they've laid out. And you squeeze the saline solution into your nose. It'll go up one nostril, down through the other. You do the rinse on both sides. If you're incredibly congested, I'd recommend doing it three times a day if you can. If, you could only maintain once or twice a, day it will still help, but the three, times-a-day will really flush things out.

You probably only need to do it for a