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Natural Medicine

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Clarissa

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Is anybody here into natural medicine? We could share our favorite recipes.

For instance, Klara had the sniffles and a bit of a cough. N added some drops of eucalyptus essential oil to her bath, and age woke up healthy the next day. An alternative method is to bake a whole onion and leave it in the bedroom overnight, but that’s cruel. Or you could boil some potatoes and inhale the vapor. This is great for bronchitis.

If a kid is running around somewhere in nature and scrapes her knee, pick a plantago leaf and put it on the wound. The wound will heal a lot faster.

If you got varicose veins, pick some lilac leaves (not flowers, leaves), put them in a mason jar, pour vodka to cover the leaves, and let stand for a week in a dark, cool place. Then rub the whole thing into your legs, top to bottom.

15 responses to “Natural Medicine”

  1. Maria Avatar
    Maria

    I have get heartburn very often. My go to natural remedy is eating a few raw almonds (with the brown skin). Works like a charm.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I didn’t know this one! Thank you!!!

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    2. Pen Avatar
      Pen

      If this worked for me it would be awesome. But instead the almonds give me hiccups for some reason.

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  2. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    My Granny used to soak raisins in a jar of gin, and eat a couple when her arthritis got bad. It’s unclear whether the effect was any different from just sipping a bit of gin 😉

    We use coconut oil on sunburns, and we think it helps them heal faster.

    Since I stopped being able to take NSAIDs a decade or so ago, I’ve been exploring all sorts of options for drug-free pain and nausea relief (for migraine, mostly), and there are a bunch of things that help at least a little: smearing wet clay on the scalp, cold running water, fresh air, a few drops of peppermint oil on a hanky by the bed, lying on the floor, putting out a dish of vinegar, standing near a fire outdoors… No idea why any of those things help. I’m as baffled as anyone, but when faced with three or four days of excruciating pain, one will try nearly anything. Doing several of them together can often make the attack bearable, and shorten the duration. If anyone knows of any I haven’t run across yet, I’m all ears! (you’d think the clay part would be impractically messy and weird looking, but it’s amazing what you can hide under a nice scarf!)

    I have used eucalyptus oil in a water-vapor diffuser when the kids had colds, and it did help them sleep easier. Not sure if they recovered faster or not. I feel like I should try the onion next time…

    We have successfully used fasting, followed by a temporary all-meat diet, to recover from antibiotic-induced chronic constipation so bad that we had to see a digestive specialist and a huge daily dose of PEG was having no effect other than nausea. That discovery was a lucky accident: the specialist was no help at all. I remembered some random podcast where various extreme fad diets were discussed: intermittent fasting, keto, and carnivore among them. The embarrassingly common complaint with all those was that they cause loose bowels. I remembered that, checked a few diet support forums and found that yes, this was a very common side-effect, and I thought: “I’ve got to try that!” It worked beautifully, and after a couple of weeks I went back to eating normally and everything was fine. This is now our “magic reset button” whenever something digestive goes wrong. We don’t try to wait it out, we just start cooking broth.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      These are all great! I’m copy-pasting them to my list.

      I find it really weird that in the US people just get prescribed antibiotics and that’s it. Nobody suggests a probiotic recovery regimen. Where I come from, we take post-antibiotic recovery very seriously.

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        It’s insane! The way I understand it, if US doctors recommend anything that’s not on the official list, they risk being booted from their professional associations or losing their insurance or something. And the official list is all pharmaceuticals. There’s this attitude that patients don’t want to hear about diet and lifestyle modifications, and won’t follow those recommendations anyway, so why bother? We don’t take any kind of recovery seriously here– not even from childbirth!

        I first encountered real recovery care in Peru: after a bout of severe dysentery (no antibiotics!), my partera put me on a strict regimen of slowly sipping “sales de rehidracion” for days, and then graduated me to slowly sipping a couple of blender concoctions made thus:

        1) 1 banana, juice of 2 oranges, big pinch of salt, enough water added to make 1 liter, blend till smooth.
        2) A cup of cooked rice, a well-boiled carrot, salt, and add water to make 1 liter: blend smooth

        You get to eat a spoonful every three minutes, as long as there’s no puking or cramping.

        You can’t buy proper rehydration salts in the pharmacy here in the US, but they are now a key part of my first-aid supplies: I order them online, and would not be caught without them. We get them out for any kind of vomiting or diarrhea, and they work amazingly well.

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      2. Pen Avatar
        Pen

        And it’s just as important to start a probiotic regimen while you’re still on the antibiotics, too, to prevent oral thrush and other issues. I tend to have the opposite problem with regards to antibiotics—I typically need to limit myself to broth and soup and starches like toast, potatoes, and rice—but eating yogurt and cheese and other things while you’re taking the antibiotics can help reduce sudden flora growth.

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    2. methylethyl Avatar
      methylethyl

      I should add that the “fasting” part of that constipation regimen was clear, non-sugary liquids: water with salt, chicken broth, and ginger tea with lemon.

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  3. V Avatar
    V

    Any kind of stomach irritation and I make a tea with fresh ginger, fennel, mint tea. I have also added turmeric but it’s not my favorite so if you like it it’s worth adding.

    Eucalyptus in our humidifier or diffuser And Vicks when we have colds or congestion.

    I second peppermint oil for headaches, works very well. One of my good friends was on an anti-seizure med for crippling migraines and it gave her dozens of kidney stones. She now uses peppermint oil almost exclusively.

    Eating turmeric or taking it supplementally is great for inflammation. I also suggest gelatin or collagen rich foods/lots of meat broths.

    Aloe is great for any kind of burn but I’ve had great luck preventing a bad cooking burn from blistering by immediately rubbing a halved onion on the burn, and applying mayo after. My husband taught me that one.

    I’ve got a whole bunch of them but it’s late and these are what kind to mind now. Enjoying the suggestions!

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  4. Pen Avatar
    Pen

    Chewing a peppermint leaf can help with nausea—so can those hard peppermint candies or candy canes. A water bottle humidifier can help with seasonal nosebleeds. I second the aloe, too—that stuff is absolutely amazing, especially on sunburns.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      My husband is a big fan of aloe. And there’s a million remedies involving birch trees that Russians developed over the centuries.

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  5. Z Avatar
    Z

    I didn’t know all thee things weren’t recommended. I’ve had MDs from all over the US say most of these since I was 5, that instance having been yogurt with antibiotics. Some I picked up abroad, but many I got from MDs here. They don’t say to do this instead of pharmaceuticals (unless they’re a homeopath or some kind of other natural type).

    I guess it’s not all MDs but then I don’t go back to all MDs.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I’m sure one can find a doctor who isn’t all about prescribing. But it isn’t easy and many people don’t know they need to look. A friend’s toddler was prescribed antibiotics six times before the age of two. And there was no hint of suggesting a probiotic regimen. I shudder to imagine what the poor kid’s microbiome must be like. He now refuses to eat anything but junk food even though the parents are into healthy eating and the mom is vegetarian.

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    2. methylethyl Avatar
      methylethyl

      Weirdly, my last round of antibiotics destroyed my ability to digest dairy– like, all dairy. Even yogurt and cheese, so it wasn’t a lactose issue. I don’t know what happened, but it was catastrophic, and it was months before I could eat any amount of it without a relapse. Not arguing: I know lots of people who had good results with yogurt + antibiotics. Just tacking on a note: there are cases where dairy can make it worse.

      We use homemade sauerkraut as the go-to probiotic for these situations. In case someone else out there needs a non-dairy option.

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        I always go with the sauerkraut I make, too. My husband is lactose-intolerant anyway, so that option is out.

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