Getting over a cold in less than 18 hours

Last Thursday afternoon I was feeling under the weather.  I found myself coughing while I was talking to someone. I realised I had a cold!  

I was due to go to a the Mannatech European conference over the weekend. I couldn't be ill!!

I decided that quick action was needed and I took my own advice. I looked at my diary and cancelled a non-urgent appointment for the next morning. I also completed just what I had to do and finished work for the day.

I went downstairs, wrapped myself in a blanket in front of the TV and decided to start taking Immunostart, as I didn't want to phone my homeopath and didn't have the brain power to work out what homeopathic remedy I needed. I drank and ate just what I wanted. I sat on the sofa and took Immunostart every hour during the evening.

At around 8pm I got very hot, so I peeled off the blanket and took more Immunostart. I stayed hot overnight, but I woke up in the morning cool and, although I felt tired, I was feeling better.  By the time I had to leave for the conference at 11am I was recovered.

I looked back over the experience and this is what I recognised.

• I have been excessively busy over the last few weeks, because I have started a multitude of new projects
• I had a low grade head ache for a couple of days, which I had ignored
• I had been telling people how to nutritional supplements and homeopathy can help them stay healthy, but how they needed to notice the early signs and take prompt action

This experience showed me that my advice worked!

Why I am a loyal customer of Mannatech Nutritional Products

I met a woman last night and we got talking about Mannatech.  I told her I had been taking the products for over 4 years and I truly believe they are making a positive difference to my health.

She was a bit dismissive and just said I was very loyal to Mannatech, as if that was a naive action.  So it got me thinking.

Why am I so passionate about taking Mannatech supplements, why does Peter take them without me nagging him and why are they the only nutritional products I recommend to my patients and friends?

I think this short video explains it very clearly.

Why are you talking about Hayfever? I haven’t got it now, it’s Autumn!

The hayfever season is so miserable, so once it’s over most people are just grateful and forget about it till next summer. But should you?

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Homeopaths know that the reason we get the common hayfever symptoms of runny nose and itchy eyes is only partly due to pollen, especially as some people know their hayfever is better when they go outside. Also symptoms are often worse in different locations, so they might be better by the sea and worse in towns where there is more pollution, or when the weather gets really hot.

However, the severity and type of our symptoms is really related to our underlying level of health and our subsequent level of susceptibility, rather than just the environmental conditions.

This is why homeopaths recommend treating your overall level of health in between the hayfever seasons, so that when the spring comes round next year you will find the symptoms are reduced and over a few years may stop altogether. 

People often try homeopathic remedies when their symptoms are really bad, but like the drugs you buy from the chemist, they are only palliating the symptoms. Although that can be helpful to get through the worst of the season, it is not treating the underlying susceptibility, so they will just come back again next year and most people find they get worse each year.

A short course of specific homeopathic remedies focusing on your level of health you inherited from your parents and possibly a small change in diet, or a different nutritional supplement, will bring you to a higher level of health overall and will subsequently reduce your susceptibility to pollens in the summer.

Come to see me in October or November for the specific course of remedies and to start to make the nutritional changes at the same time, so they are having an effect by the start of the next hayfever season.

Maternal and Child Nutrition guidelines - New Report on Feeding Toddlers

The latest report and recommendations for Child nutrition were commissioned by the NHS and have just been published.

Click on this link to see the full report

The report is easy to read and contains advice for mothers and children up to the age of 5.  

The section on Food Portions is very clear as they are listed for most common foods, but are also shown as pictures on typical plates.  

You can download a copy here.

Children need to drink full fat milk

How can I say that?  There are 2 reasons.

Firstly, children use a lot of energy every day, even when they are not doing a lot of physical activity. They need the sustained energy provided by healthy fats. 1g of fat provides 9 kcals, while 1g carbohydrate (CHO) gives us 4 kcal.

So on first look it would seem better to eat the lower calorie option, however CHO is very rapidly converted to energy, or if it is not needed immediately it is stored in the body as fat! The calories from fat provide a more sustained source of energy.  

But how can that still be a good thing when we are seeing the biggest rise in childhood obesity in decades? The answer is that because the calories from low fat are replaced with high sugar calories which get used up quickly and need replacing. So children need to eat more. 

Secondly, we have taken on the idea of needing to eat a low fat diet to be healthy, and, although we do have to cut down on unhealthy hydrogenated fats which are commonly found in processed foods, we still need to eat healthy fats, as they are the source of nutrients which we can’t make so we have to eat.

These healthy fats contain the fat soluble vitamins, Vit D and Vit E and also essential fatty acids which are needed to keep the heart and brain healthy.

Also we see frequent news items about people have low levels of Vit D. So as well as us not getting out in the sunshine, this could be a result of people drinking skim milk, where all the Vit D is removed along with the fat!  

So an easy answer is to give your children a glass of full fat milk with meals, instead of juice. Or as a between meal snack.

It will give them an excellent source of Vit D, calcium for healthy bones and some calories from healthy fats that will give them energy to do all the exciting things on their full timetable.