You’re entitled to feel a little nervous: relaxing outside on a balmy tropical evening, you notice a mosquito feasting on your arm. Although your instinctive reaction means the mosquito’s life comes to an abrupt end, you can’t help but worry.
That concern is justified: That tiny mosquito could suck out your energy and joy of life in one brief visit, through infecting you with of the tropical mosquito-borne viruses like Ross River or Barmah Forest. These viruses can flatten previously healthy, active people for months with debilitating symptoms including joint ache and relentless dragging fatigue. Some become too unwell to work.
Although many people recover their health completely, others are affected for months or even years with their vibrancy impaired and sometimes with ongoing pain. The urban myth claims nothing can help, but in fact, from a naturopathic perspective, several tools are available to help relieve the symptoms and speed recovery.
If you’ve been struck down by one of these tropical viruses, one of the key strategies you have is rest. Your body is literally fighting an infection; that uses immense amounts of energy. Remember the last time you had a flu or cold, how depleted you felt? Well, the tropical viruses are like the flu, but a more serious form of infection.
You’ve probably noticed how easily colds and flus can ‘hang on’ when you refuse to allow recovery rest, soldiering on as if nothing was happening. It’s the same with the mosquito-borne viral illnesses: Refuse to rest and you’ll suffer the symptoms even longer. So rest is your number one priority.
Another strategy is to utilise food as medicine and incorporate more immune-boosting, inflammation calming foods into your diet. That means fresh raw foods with a high nutrient density: raw juices, salads, fresh fruits. Remember that home-made chicken soup as an anti-viral isn’t just an old wives’ tale, it’s been scientifically proven to help as it calms down the inflammation-inciting activity of particular immune cells, neutrophils. And that helps because a large contributor to your aches and pains is the waste materials of the immune battle irritating your nerve endings. Calm the inflammation and you help reduce the pain.
Finally, your herbalist has natural remedies available to help too. Some research has identified particular herbs as active against specific viruses; other herbs have a broader range of activity. There are also natural remedies to help calm the inflammation that can create joint and muscle pain.
At the same time an adolescent’s body needs lots of extra zinc is the time of life your teenage child is becoming more independent in their food choices. What they choose to eat away from home is likely to be influenced by their peers’ food preferences. The teenage years can also be a time when different dietary regimes are explored; so many teenagers try out vegan or vegetarian diets that can be low in micronutrients like zinc and vitamin A.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard yourself murmuring that modern mantra “I’m too busy to….make a real breakfast…..exercise….meditate…. (insert term for any particular health-boosting activity that takes time and effort). But in fact “too busy” could really be code for “this is not important to me”.
You’ve probably heard of meal replacement shakes, the nutrition and weight loss ‘solutions’ promoted for people so busy they can’t stop to eat. You might also have heard of complete meal replacements like Soylent, a manufactured drink of nutrients designed to save you from ever having to pick up a saucepan, knife or chopping board again.
How did you feel returning to work after the Christmas holiday break? I bet that by the time you closed the door on your office for the last time in December you were really craving a little time out. Hopefully that restorative rest has put you in a better place to handle the challenges of life again.
Idly waiting in the post office queue, the toy with a “try me”! sticker caught my attention. A hole cut in the packaging was just big enough to push the button and create a noise loud enough to make everyone around me turn around to look. It made me think of the metaphorical buttons we can all wear from time to time; the ones that seem to control our reactions (but don’t have to).
One of the most challenging of the menopausal symptoms, I think, is hot flushes. Some women manage to get through menopause without them, others struggle with them for years.
It’s the time of year when many of us reach for a fresh piece of paper and begin defining goals for the coming year. What’s the coming year going to be like for your health? If you started 2016 with a sense of resolve but didn’t follow through to completion, I’d like to help you make them actually manifest this time around.
