I grew up in a family that also used home remedies. For sore throats we we added honey to hit lemonade (or just drank the hot lemonade by itself.)
Coughing fits were treated with a spell sitting in the bathroom with a hot shower running. The steam worked wonders.
Mayonnaise in hair will kill head lice. It suffocates the lice.
We too used Aloe for burns.
Ear aches were treated with drops of hot olive oil. You had to be careful that it wasn’t too hot, but it had to be hot enough to work its way through the ear canal.
Splinters and other wounds were often treated with something called Drawing Salve. It was a black tarry substance and nowadays it can be found at the pharmacy under the name Ichthammol Ointment. It’s perfect for getting splinters to dislodge themselves.
Rubbing Vicks ointment on your feet (or chest if you could stand it that close to your nose) would help with coughs.
OTC D Mannose (500mg) once daily is incredibly helpful to reduce UTI risk, Glucosamine Chondroitin is helpful for arthritis, cold air or hot shower steam for croup, honey for coughs in head to head trials with cough medicine show it’s equally effective in kids, and I highly recommend Zinc if you start to get sick :)
I used to get terrible sore throats a lot with colds and my favorite thing was when my dad would bake a lemon in the oven, squeeze out the hot juice, and add a ton of honey. I could drink that all day. My mom use to steam me, too, but I loved it. I think she would throw in a few bags of peppermint tea into the pot and it always felt so cozy.
Now, my answer to that telltale scratch before a cold is Ginger Lemonade: steep chopped up ginger for 1o minutes in boiled water. Strain off the ginger and add lemon juice, honey, and cayenne. There are measurements, I found this in the New York Times, but I like it stronger than the original recipe called for. And why not use the entire gigantic piece of ginger, all the lemons, enough honey to make it a little viscousy, and enough cayenne to really wake you up? I think the cayenne is the real secret weapon.
My brother used to get a lot of styes and a warm chamomile tea bag on the eye a couple of times a day seemed to work really well.
I also found that vanilla extract (real vanilla, and not the alcohol free kind) works really well on cold sores. Much better than any of the ointments and drops we've gotten from the drugstore. We were out of regular vanilla once - shock! - and we tried some weird alcohol free thing that I had instead which didn't work. Then I put some vodka on a cotton round and put that on my kid's lip thinking that the alcohol in the vanilla had something to do with it, and voila! Cold sore gone. We do stick with the vanilla because it feels a lot better going on than the vodka, and it's just best to keep the booze away from the kids when they are underage.
I grew up in a family that also used home remedies. For sore throats we we added honey to hit lemonade (or just drank the hot lemonade by itself.)
Coughing fits were treated with a spell sitting in the bathroom with a hot shower running. The steam worked wonders.
Mayonnaise in hair will kill head lice. It suffocates the lice.
We too used Aloe for burns.
Ear aches were treated with drops of hot olive oil. You had to be careful that it wasn’t too hot, but it had to be hot enough to work its way through the ear canal.
Splinters and other wounds were often treated with something called Drawing Salve. It was a black tarry substance and nowadays it can be found at the pharmacy under the name Ichthammol Ointment. It’s perfect for getting splinters to dislodge themselves.
Rubbing Vicks ointment on your feet (or chest if you could stand it that close to your nose) would help with coughs.
OTC D Mannose (500mg) once daily is incredibly helpful to reduce UTI risk, Glucosamine Chondroitin is helpful for arthritis, cold air or hot shower steam for croup, honey for coughs in head to head trials with cough medicine show it’s equally effective in kids, and I highly recommend Zinc if you start to get sick :)
I used to get terrible sore throats a lot with colds and my favorite thing was when my dad would bake a lemon in the oven, squeeze out the hot juice, and add a ton of honey. I could drink that all day. My mom use to steam me, too, but I loved it. I think she would throw in a few bags of peppermint tea into the pot and it always felt so cozy.
Now, my answer to that telltale scratch before a cold is Ginger Lemonade: steep chopped up ginger for 1o minutes in boiled water. Strain off the ginger and add lemon juice, honey, and cayenne. There are measurements, I found this in the New York Times, but I like it stronger than the original recipe called for. And why not use the entire gigantic piece of ginger, all the lemons, enough honey to make it a little viscousy, and enough cayenne to really wake you up? I think the cayenne is the real secret weapon.
My brother used to get a lot of styes and a warm chamomile tea bag on the eye a couple of times a day seemed to work really well.
I also found that vanilla extract (real vanilla, and not the alcohol free kind) works really well on cold sores. Much better than any of the ointments and drops we've gotten from the drugstore. We were out of regular vanilla once - shock! - and we tried some weird alcohol free thing that I had instead which didn't work. Then I put some vodka on a cotton round and put that on my kid's lip thinking that the alcohol in the vanilla had something to do with it, and voila! Cold sore gone. We do stick with the vanilla because it feels a lot better going on than the vodka, and it's just best to keep the booze away from the kids when they are underage.