The Best Medicine
By Toby Helmstetter, LAc
We talk an awful lot about prevention at TAC. We tell people how to use acupuncture to prevent colds, and how to use herbs when symptoms first appear to fight off infection. But what's the best medicine when you've caught a cold? Sometimes, even despite our best efforts, we lose the battle and come down with a full-blown cold. But this is not the time to give up on Chinese medicine, not the time to reach for the anti-histamines and cough suppressants. Chinese medicine still has a lot to offer to the person who's caught a cold, or even worse, the flu. Here are our recommendations on how to take care of yourself and get over that cold quick:
1. Keep your appointment. It may seem silly to keep your regularly scheduled appointment for acupuncture when you've caught a cold, but it's probably the single best thing you can do for yourself. One acupuncture treatment can dramatically reduce the severity of your symptoms. And often times we can still address what you're coming in for in addition to treating the cold. Even if you come for something completely unrelated to your immune system--say you come for fertility treatments, or for anxiety--treating your cold with acupuncture is never a deviation in your treatments. I frequently see a dramatic change in someone's chronic condition after a cold or flu has passed (especially if symptoms have not been suppressed with conventional medicines). Just like children have a growth spurt after a fever, or cut a new tooth after an upper respiratory infection, a cold in an adult can be a reflection of deeper changes about to come. Coming in for acupuncture during a cold can help facilitate this process and help you feel better sooner.
2. Get some herbs. If you can't get an appointment with your acupuncturist, at the very least give us a call. We can prescribe some herbs for you that will help you get over the cold more quickly and help ease the symptoms too. Chinese herbal medicine has some very powerful anti-viral (as well as anti-bacterial) herbs which can be combined into a formula specific to your symptoms. Have a cough, congestion and a sore throat? We have herbs for that! Have body aches, fever and a sinus headache? We have herbs for that too! Your acupuncturist can talk to you over the phone and prescribe herbs that you could pick up that day and start taking right away. And the herbs won't make you drowsy, or speedy, or both. You'll have a remedy that will treat the symptoms and the actual virus itself, to help you get on with your life.
3. Take your vitamins. Our bodies rely on minerals to help us fight infection. Once we've caught a cold, the body pulls on our mineral reserves to fight back. This is why many doctors recommend vitamin C in high doses when we're sick. So if you take a multi-vitamin regularly, keep taking it, and add some vitamin C to your daily regimen too.
4. Avoid sugar and dairy. Viruses feed on sugar. Sugar depletes our vitamin C reserves. And sugar compromises our immune system. By avoiding sugar when we're sick, we're helping to starve the virus, and keep our immune system strong. Dairy is mucus producing. When we have a cold, our mucus membranes are inflamed and so we produce much more phlegm. If we avoid dairy, we give our bodies less "material" with which to produce mucus. This helps those uncomfortable symptoms during a cold like stuffy nose, post-nasal drip, and cough.
5. Get some rest. When studying the herbs that treat colds and flu, one of my Chinese herbal medicine teachers said, "Sometimes rest and water is best medicine," and I think he was right. Something I think we all know but try to ignore is that when we do get sick, it is a signal from our bodies that we need to rest, that we've been doing too much and our bodies are overwhelmed. Resting when we feel run down during a cold helps us heal faster. If we rest, our body and our immune system can actually be stronger after the cold is over.