How to Recover Faster From a Cold or Flu

Did you catch a cold? Or what might be a flu virus or other virus, and you're thinking, oh my gosh, how did I get sick? I'm so bummed. What am I gonna do now? How do I get it to go away as fast as possible? Then you're in the right place, because in this video, I'm gonna be giving you my tips of how I get myself through a cold virus and recover faster and avoid antibiotics and steroids and other kinds of treatments so you can get better and to doing what you love and at the same time, be supporting your body through the process. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson. If I haven't met you before, I'm glad you're here. And welcome to How Humans Heal. So let's start talking about how you're feeling, first of all. So when you. What I always like to do is figure out that you caught the cold as soon as possible. So because a lot of times we dismiss or we kind of ignore symptoms. You know, we're like, well, maybe I have a scratchy throat. And then several days go by and then it's like, like full blast. So what I want to suggest is that it's much better if you can figure out that you caught a cold and start addressing it as soon as possible. That's going to help you get through it faster. So it might already be too late, depending when you're watching this video, but for next time, really start to bring your awareness. What were the first symptoms? How did you first know you maybe caught a cold or caught a virus of some sort? Of. Did you feel scratchy throat, sore throat, Woke up with a sore throat. Maybe you woke up with some phlegm that you were coughing up. Maybe you have like a snee, extra sneezing that you don't usually do. A runny nose, you're blowing your nose. Maybe you felt more tired than usual. Headache or neck ache. Sometimes it'll go straight to your head or your neck. Sometimes it goes straight to your ears. Maybe you start to feel like your ears are filled with fluid or they're popping, or some people even will feel dizzy. Sometimes patients will say to me, I don't know why I felt dizzy all of a sudden. And it could be actually from having a type of virus that affects your inner ear. It can make you feel dizzy or vertigo or nausea even, or headache. And so you start to go, oh, wow, this is a virus. I mean, sometimes it's confusing at first because allergies can also cause some of these same symptoms. So you Want to be thinking, is this, Am I allergic to something? Like, did I get exposed to some dust or pollen or something I'm allergic to? Or is this a virus? Now, you know, it's becoming bacterial if you start to see yellow or green phlegm. So sometimes I say to patients, do you see yellow or green phlegm? And they're like, I haven't been looking at my phlegm, so I encourage you to look at it. So when you cough up and, you know you have phlegm in your mouth or you blow your nose and, you know, look at the color. That's really important. If it starts to look yellow or green, then we know we've got some bacteria that jumped on board. Usually the bacteria. It starts as a virus, and the bacteria come on top of that because bacteria love when there's a lot of extra fluid, right? So the virus causes your body to make all this extra liquid that's getting stuck in your ears, and it's getting stuck in your throat, and it's making you cough and all that extra fluid. Then the bacteria love it. And they're like, we're going to hang out in all this liquid. And then the bacteria come in and you start getting a sinus infection or bronchitis or pneumonia, because all that liquid is just sitting around. So one of my best strategies for getting through a virus and avoiding a bacterial infection and avoiding the need for antibiotics is to get that fluid out of there. So I would just say, like, as soon as I know that I come down with something, I immediately am thinking, I want to get that. Like, I'm going to be blowing my nose. I'm going to be clearing my throat. I'm going to want that fluid out of there. I don't want it sitting there. So don't let your sinuses just fill with liquid and sit there. We want it out. You want to be able to breathe through your nose. That's a good test. If you can breathe through your nose, you know there's not a bunch of fluid stuck in there, right? So make it so that you can blow it out, clear it out, and then keep breathing through your nose and keep. Get that moving. Right. And part of this is when we first start to get sick again, sometimes we're in kind of like, denial. Oh, maybe. And maybe not even wanting to tell other people that you're sick or not even letting yourself know you're sick. And yet the denial kind of, like, makes it so that we're not really giving our body the attention it needs in order to heal. So I encourage you to just be like, okay, I got a cold. Okay, let me do it. What do I need to do? And then the other thing that can sometimes happen is we feel frustrated, like, oh, my gosh, I'm so mad that someone gave this to me. And we're getting stuck in the anger and the resentment about it. And when we're stuck in that, it's also not helping us, because now it's a stress response. Now we've got cortisol and adrenaline, and that's going to work against you when you're trying to heal from a cold. So you want to be like, okay, I caught a cold. That happens with humans. As humans, we get exposed to viruses, especially when we're around other people. So if you're traveling or you're at events and you have family members, I know I have a granddaughter, so I get exposed to viruses all the time from my granddaughter and my daughter who are in the college environment, and then they come to my house, and then I get exposed. So I'm not going to get stuck in the resentment about that. I want them around me. So that means I'm going to get exposed to viruses. So that's going to give me an opportunity to be with this and say, what can I do to help my body recover faster? What can I do to help protect myself? And so we'll talk more about that, too, as we're working through this process. But for now, what I want to focus on is helping you get your mindset into the game. The game now. Now that you know you have a virus, you're in the game of, how do I help my body heal? So if your mind is doing resentment, or if your mind is doing frustration or whatever it is doing, sort of say, okay, let that go. Let me get into the moment where I can actually help my body heal. Because actually catching a virus is actually good for your immune system. And immunologists say that it's actually healthy for us to catch at least one virus every year. That's actually good practice for our immune system. Our immune system needs to get exposed to a virus in order to mount a healthy immune response and protect us. And it's healthy to get some inflammation and work through the process and have all the phlegm and cough it up. That's a normal things our bodies do. So letting yourself do that and be like, okay, how do I support my body in its healing process? Your body knows how to protect you from a virus. It does. You have a built if you're a human, you have a built in human immune system that knows how to protect you. We just need to support it, right? So we can go, okay, how can. Let me let go of the resentment and let me just get into the game of helping my body protect me from this virus. And some, and you can figure it may be sometimes it's 24 hours, sometimes it's several days, sometimes it's a week. Right. So you. I sometimes am like, okay, let me see if I can shorten this as much as possible. But at the same time, if we're too attached to how long it's going to last, that's more stress again, right? So how do we not get stressed about it and just be like, okay, I'm gonna each day do all the things I can do to help my body through this. So let's go in. What are the things you could do? Now? The first thing I'm, I'm gonna think about is salt. I love to use salt. Now the thing is, of course there's different kinds of salt and patients will say to me, is one salt better than another salt? And I just attempt to get the healthiest sea salt or Celtic salt. Not I wouldn't just get a plain sodium salt. Like I wouldn't get just a plain kosher salt because it's just sodium. We want a whole salt that has all the minerals in it. And so you want to get as healthy type as you can of a sea salt or Celtic salt. And I'm going to put that, I'm going to get a little juice, glass of water, like 2 ounces of filtered water. So this is clean water. We put in some sea salt and, and I'm gargling with it. So that's what. As soon as I feel something in my throat, I'm going to go gargle some salt water because salt is, it's going to kill viruses and bacteria, is going to be anti inflammatory. So it's going to help soothe any inflammation and pain and discomfort and it's going to help thin out the phlegm. If there's phlegm that's gumming up in your throat, it's going to help thin it out so you can get it out easier. So it does a lot of good stuff salts. So make sure you have, I mean usually in your kitchen you're going to have some sea salt, right? If not, then get some good healthy sea salt, keep it in your cabinet and you're going to get some salt water and just gargle and spit. Get used to. Get really good at gargling and spitting. It's very good for your body to know how to do that. And then I would take it a next step, especially if you start to fill it in your sinuses and you're blowing your nose and you're like, oh, geez, it's hitting my sinuses. Then let's get going with a nasal rinse. Now you can find some saline nasal rinses. I just honestly find that this. The saline rinses are not salty enough. And they don't. They oftentimes are not enough. And so what I do, again, you got to get a clean bowl and you got clean water, like filtered water, and you. And you put some nice sea salt in there. Fresh bowl, like not. Not something that's been sitting around for a long time. Fresh, new, and you. And then you can gargle with it. So what I do is I take the bowl of water and I stick my nose in it, just barely under the surface of the water and sniff the water up my nose, like a quick little sniff and blow it out. Blow it out into. Have a tissue there, a paper towel. Blow your nose out. So you're just barely sniffing the water up your nose and then blowing it back out again. And you do that a couple times. And that will allow you to get some of that nice, clean salt water up your nose, rinse it out, because you want to get. If there's any. Any phlegm stuck in there, you want to get it rinsed out. But I don't tend to use, like, a whole neti pot type of situation because I find it's too much liquid and it's likely to remain in your sinuses. So if you're using a neti pot, be very careful that you really don't need that much. And we're talking maybe like no more than a teaspoon or two of water that rinses in and immediately blow it back out again. I don't want that liquid sitting in there. And you definitely always want to have clean water and clean electrolytes or minerals or salt that you're using and to make sure that you don't bring in anything that you don't want into your sinuses. Okay. So that's how I do it. If you would like to know more, I definitely can guide you and teach you more. That's what I teach my patients to do. So. And you always want to listen to your own body and your own health situation. Right. So always, whenever you hear from Me, please know that it's important to, if you're not already my patient, definitely check with your practitioner or provider. Or if you would like to be my patient, you can reach out to my office and become a patient. And this way I can guide you more. So. But in the meantime, just really listen to your body. And if something doesn't feel right to you, then don't do it. You got to do the things that feel right and resonate with you, okay? Including whether that's a salt water gargle or anything else. Now, the next thing that I do is I use what sometimes is called colloidal silver or nanoparticles of, I call it silver in a liquid. It's usually dilutions of silver in a water base. And that type of colloidal silver or nanoparticles of silver can be used on your skin. It can be, you can spray it into your mouth, into your throat. It can be used in a sight, you know, spraying up your nose. It can be even used in the eyes. Silver is antimicrobial, so it kills viruses, bacteria, fungus. And so it's really a great tool as an antimicrobial. Anything that I mention as a product, you can also. I'll put a link down below. You can find on my website. Some products are available to the public and some products require that you're under supervision. My supervision as a, as a patient, under my clinic. So if there may be some things that I mentioned that don't show as available, that just means you need to be a patient in order to get access to them. So the silver though, is available to the public. You can find it in various locations. In my store, I put the types that I usually recommend that have the highest quality practitioner grade forms. And so you can use the, I usually get the nasal spray one because I can squirt it in my throat with the squirter and then I can squirt it up my nose. And you could squirt it in your throat and up your nose twice a day or three times a day. Works great. And you're gonna, it's gonna help you to speed up your healing process from any kind of cold, virus or other infection. Okay. So that's the starting place. I also recommend that you, as soon as you know that you caught a virus, your body needs help healing. It means maybe you can look at your schedule for the day or the next couple days and say, hey, I'm, I'm. You might have to cancel plans or, or say no to certain things. You May need to just, you might need to rest more, right? You might be like, hey, I'm sorry, I'm not going to be able to do that. I'm going to need to do more rest and recovery. And so you want to be able to plan on going to bed earlier, sleeping in, taking naps during the day. I also recommend using a hot shower, hot bath so you can go get into the hot shower. The hot bath stay a little longer heat. When you get your body hot, it also helps you to fend off a infection. So just like a fever. So if you don't already have a fever, then maybe when you get in the hot bath, it's going to raise your body temperature. It's going to help your body fend off this virus. Um, now mind you, if a fever gets too high, then you're gonna need to consider maybe if it's a bacterial infection. So if your fever goes out over 103, then you want to cool off. And one of the best ways to prevent a fever from going too high is to stay hydrated. So make sure you're also drinking water with electrolytes. You can put the sea little pinch of sea salt in your water for electrolytes and drink. So you're drinking water, electrolytes staying hydrated to help prevent a fever from going too high. But if your temperature is going super high, then that's often a sign that this is something else going on. This could be a bacterial infection, in which case you might need antibiotics. Right? So use the fever as helping you understand what your body needs. But a little bit of A fever, like 99 degrees, 100 degrees, 101, is actually your immune system working. That's what the immune. What happens when your immune system working is it'll raise your body temperature. So that's okay. If you have a little bit of a fever, it's okay to raise your body temperature from a hot bath or even a sauna if you have access to a sauna, like an infrared sauna. So you can do types of things that will get your body some warmth. Bundle up in warm pajamas and warm blanket and stay snuggled and warm because all of that's going to help your body to heal. You can also do alternating with cold if you'd like. It's something that's used traditionally as a water therapy where you do hot like three minutes of hot in the shower followed by one minute of cold. And it doesn't have to be ice cold. You could start with cool water, but it's just the, the Transition from hot to cold. When you go to cold, it makes it so your body has to circulate the blood to warm you up. So we can also use this as what I call the magic socks, where you put cold socks on your feet for three minutes and then you put on, you put, you put the warm. Yet with this one, you do cold socks and then you put on dry socks over the top and let, you let your body warm up your feet, right. So you have these cold socks on your feet covered with dry warm socks and your body warms up your feet. There's also can be used in the shower, as I mentioned, like three minutes in the hot shower with one minute of cold. And you end with cold when you're doing that in the shower. And this is a way to stimulate the immune system and circulation. This is something you could even do when you're not sick to help boost your immune system and help prevent yourself from getting sick. So there's things you can do that don't involve taking any supplements that just have to do with learning how to stimulate your own immune system. To that end, I would recommend to avoid things that you might be consuming that decrease your immune function. So you're going to want to avoid sugar, like I'm talking about refined sugar like, like a spoonful of sugar or any products that say cane sugar in the ingredients. That's not the case with, with fruit or honey. You could likely have some fruit and a little bit of honey. I like to put raw honey in my herbal tea to soothe the throat. Right. I like to use herbal like traditional medicinal throat coat tea and put some raw honey. That's very soothing. You're not going to overdo it with the honey. But a little bit of honey can be very soothing to your throat. But sugar, like we're talking cane sugar, straight white sugar or brown sugar. That's what lowers your immune system. So you want to avoid that and then you want to do the avoid alcohol because alcohol lowers immunity as well. And avoid dairy and gluten. Those are the most inflammatory foods that are going to work against you when you have a cold virus. So avoid dairy products, anything made from cow milk, milk, cheese, ice cream, yogurt, and also avoid gluten. And then so the main ones would be sugar, alcohol, gluten and dairy. And when you avoid those foods, you're going to heal a lot faster. Dairy just increases all the phlegm and inflammation. And so I would just be like no dairy and eliminate these things that are going to drop your immune system because you need your immune system helping you now. Having optimal cortisol and adrenaline levels is essential for health and longevity. And yet the stress in the present and in the past can affect our cortisol and adrenaline levels, causing them to be too high or too low. The thing is that we're not all affected by stress in the same way. So over the past two decades, I've been researching and discovering how to help my patients recover from stress. And I've identified the five stress types which are the five common patterns of disruption in cortisol and adrenaline levels. The reason why this is so important is because the treatment is different when cortisol is too high. We use different herbs, nutrients and other modalities to bring levels back to optimal than if the level levels are too low. So that's why I, through research, developed the stress type quiz, which allows you in under two minutes to discover what likely your cortisol and adrenaline levels are. So then you can make decisions about which herbs, nutrients and other healing activities to choose to help optimize your cortisol and adrenaline again and improve your health now and into the future. Just go to stresstypequiz.com where you can take the quiz and take it from there. Okay, so you got all of that. And then when it comes to supplements, right away when someone says, Dr. Donnie, which supplements should I be taking? And I recommend you have these already in your home in your cabinet, ready to go, because by the time you find out you're sick, by the time we ship you something, it's going to take a couple days. And really, as I said, I'd rather you figure out you're sick and start taking something right away. So the things I would have in your cabinet already or if you're sick now, have us shipped to you as soon as possible would be, I would start thinking about vitamin C, zinc and echinacea. Those are my first three supplements. I would think of vitamin C because vitamin C is, is so often we don't get enough of it as humans. And even if you're eating fruits, you're probably not getting enough vitamin C and it's so good for the immune system and it's very low likelihood to have any kind of negative impact. Although if you swallow a lot of vitamin C all at once, you might have a increased likelihood of loose stool or diarrhea. So you're not going to take a lot at once. The key is to spread it over time. So better to have 500 milligrams and take it every three or four hours, you know, 500, 500, 500, 500. And spread it through the day. This way it doesn't cause loose stool, but it is giving you a whole trickle of vitamin C all day. And then of course, you're gonna go to sleep and you're not going to take it while you're sleeping, but you want to. Vitamin C is water soluble. You're going to, it's going to circulate through your body pretty quickly. So vitamin C and then there's zinc, which you can get and take, you know, between 15 and 30 milligrams per day. Now, if you were taking a lot of zinc for a long time, you're going to need to make sure you have copper, too. But if you're talking about a cold virus that you have for a week, that's not going to disrupt your copper in that amount of time. So we can bump up the zinc a little bit for a short period of time and get a lot of healing process. Zinc really helps stimulate the immune system. And then echinacea is the first herb that comes to mind for helping with cold viruses. There's a ton of research on echinacea and you can get echinacea in tea form, also in capsules or liquids, lots of different forms. Unless you're allergic to echinacea. There's definitely people who are allergic to any kind of plant substance out there or any substance out there. But as long as you're not allergic to it, then you can take echinacea again. I would take it with the vitamin C. Like spread out through the day. Every three, four, five hours, another dose, another dose, another dose, another dose. That way you have a constant flow of echinacea. It's immune, supportive and antiviral specifically. It's also a little bit antibacterial. And so those are my top ones. But there's others that I would add too. And a lot of times, you know, you're going to know what works best for your body. Some people love oregano oil and they'll have oregano oil and they love to just take either actually oil or capsules. And oregano can be very good as antiviral, immune, supportive, and antibacterial. Some people love olive leaf. Olive leaf is also great as an antiviral and immune support. So if you like olive leaf, that's a great one to take too. One of my latest favorites is black cumin seed. Black cumin seed you can get as a. It's an oil that you can get in a capsule form or in an oil. And you can, what I'm doing is taking the oil and then I take a spoonful, just put it right on the spoon and drink it down. And black cumin seed is so immune, supportive, anti inflammatory and antimicrobial all in one. So the black cumin seed can be very beautiful for that too. And then the other nutrient that I love to use is vitamin A. Now vitamin A, just like vitamin D, also really important vitamin D is when we can monitor in blood work and make sure, hey, if your vitamin D is less than 50, we need to be getting some vitamin D. Especially when we don't have very much sunlight and we're not getting vitamin D from the sun. We need to probably be taking vitamin D. But check your blood work and then you, I might suggest to take 5,000, I use every day anyway. And you can take an extra 5,000 if you catch a cold virus, and then for a week or two just to boost your levels. And then the vitamin A. Yes, you can check vitamin A in the blood. Vitamin A is also fat soluble, just like vitamin D. So we don't want to overdo it. But if you catch a cold virus, then it's okay to take a little extra vitamin A for a week. You just wouldn't do that if you're pregnant or if you're breastfeeding or if you have a liver issue or you know, you have, you know, already know you've been taking too much vitamin A. Same thing with vitamin D, right? You got to know your body and your levels. But in general we had use a little bit of extra vitamin A during a week or two long infection so we can boost the vitamin A a little bit. Actual vitamin A, not just beta carotene. And you're just not going to, you're just going to know, I'm not going to do this forever and I'm not going to overdo it. I also like to use mushroom extracts like there's reishi mushroom, shiitake, all different mushrooms that are immune supportive. And you can get very high quality mushroom formulas that usually have a combination of mushrooms in them. Those can be in capsule form or liquid form. I like host defense for example. I'll put some examples down below. And I have all of this also in my cold and flu survival guide or recovery guide. I'll put a link for that because you can download the cold and flu recovery guide from me. And this way you're going to have all of my tips right there in that guide, including links to the products that I suggest so you could get. What I would usually be doing in terms of supplements is I would look for a supplement that has vitamin C, zinc and echinacea and vitamin A together all in one. Right? Because now you got one product and it's got it all there. In fact, there's a product in the Nature Empowered product line called Immune Support that has vitamin C, zinc, echinacea together with some other herbs too, like astragalus and andrographis. These are other herbs that are antiviral and immune supportive. And then there's another product called Immune plus that has vitamin D and quercetin and nac. Quercetin is anti inflammatory. Nac helps thin the phlegm. So Immune plus is really good, especially for those reasons. And then there's also a product, there's a mushroom formula like I mentioned from Host Defense and some others as well. And then there's a vitamin A, usually vitamin A. There's vitamin A in the immune support product I mentioned. But there's also, you can get vitamin A separately if you want to take extra. And then there's also a product called beta glucan, which is not a mushroom formula but from a different source of beta glucan. That's a really good immune support. So especially if you've been catching every cold, if you're like, oh my gosh, I'm sick again, I was sick last month and now I'm sick this month, or I was sick two weeks ago and now I'm sick again, what's going on? So sometimes then we've got to dig a little deeper and add a couple extra things. Like that might be where we add the mushroom formula, the beta glucan, the extra vitamin A to really boost your immune system. But we also have to be thinking, which foods are you eating that might be dropping your immune system? And also I would start looking at your environment because if someone's catching that many colds, it could be stress. Is there stress in your environment, environment or trauma? And also is there mold in your environment? Because when we're exposed to mold toxins, like say in a water damaged building, and a lot of times people don't realize there's mold hiding behind the walls. So it's important if you're getting sick over and over again, it may be worth getting inspection for molds in your home. The molds can lower your immune system and make you more susceptible to infections. So if you're catching a lot of infections, it's worth considering whether there's mold happening. And we can also do a pan, a urine test for mold toxins to find out if you have mold toxins so that we can identify it and then we can address the mold toxins if we find them. Okay, so just know that if you keep on getting sick, there's probably a reason and we need to dig deeper. Is there imbalance of cortisol? Is there something you're eating that's inflammatory? Is there an allergen? Is there a mold exposure or some other toxin exposure? Let's address that so you don't keep on having to get sick. And especially if you're finding out to give antibiotics over and over again, then we have to be like, let's figure out how to help your immune system recover so it can get through this. What I find is once I help someone through one infection like that, then it's usually much easier the next time and the next time because you start to learn more about your body and what it needs. And so let's see. So I think you got it. Oh, the one other product I was going to mention is one of my all time favorites is called hesperidin. Hesperidin is a plant based substance that is anti histamine but it also helps decrease all the phlegm. You know how we were talking about how your body makes all this extra liquid and your ears are full and your sinuses are full and your nose is running constantly and you're just like, how do I turn off this faucet? Well, the hesperidin, it helps to decrease all that fluid production. It is also helpful for allergies. But I use it for viral infections because it helps decrease the fluid which ends up preventing bacterial infections. And it makes it also more comfortable for using a sleep better too because you don't have all that liquid dripping in your throat. Which reminds me, sometimes if you start to get a cough, it's because the liquid's dripping down your throat. So take asperidin so that you're not getting all that post nasal drip. And then you can also for a cough, you want to help your body to cough up what it's trying to cough up and prevent it from getting stuck in your lungs. Right. So you want to let's. I use a lot of times herbal formulas to help with a cough. You can use Doco tea with honey. That's a good one too because sometimes when you drink something warm, it soothes your throat and prevents the coughing. Also these other supplements I've just been mentioning including sometimes. Then we want to use something more anti inflammatory like bromelain. We use bromelain for coughing. That helps drop the inflammation there. Also, if you're getting ear infections or swelling in your eustachian tube, bromelain can be really helpful. And also there's herbal liquids that are used for cough. There's the bronchial syrup, which is an herbal formula that I love. And there's also the herbal immunity, which is some of the same and different herbs for cough. So plants or herbs can help to help your body have a more productive cough. To clear the phlegm out, to help your body heal from a cough, it's way different than a classic cough suppressant. It's not a cough suppressant. It actually helps your body heal from the cough and get the phlegm out. So we want to be able to like cough it up, get it out. Don't let it just sit in there. That's the whole idea. So you start to learn how to use your body and your coughing to be more effective to get the kid. If your body's coughing is trying to get something out, right? So it's like, oh, there's some tickle in my throat, I need to cough it out. And so you want to get it out and at the same time heal the from the cough so that it, it's not, you know, leading to more and more severe coughing that's getting deeper into your chest, hopefully. And if that happens, we can help it heal too. Just reach out and I can guide you. All right. So I hope that gives you some more confidence for when, if and when you catch a cold virus. You're like, okay, I'm going to start right in, right? Just dive right in and be like, okay, I'm going to get the salt water, I'm going to get the silver spray. I'm going to squirt my nose and mouth. I'm going to do, I'm going to take a hot bath, I'm going to sleep. I'm going to avoid the foods that are going to, to prevent my healing. And I'm going to take the supplements that are going to help my healing. So I would take like hesperidin also. You're going to take it every few hours just like the other. So I would do like immune support that has a vitamin C and zinc and all the antiviral herbs in it with the hesperidin, that's antihistamine and decreases the phlegm. Take one of each, like every four hours. Just Keep taking it every four hours. Meanwhile, you can take extra vitamin A if you would like. You can take extra other herbs if you'd like. You can take extra mushrooms if you like. And this way you're matching your body and giving your body the support it needs to help your immune system protect you. And if you get stuck or you need more help, then reach out. Because I'm happy to guide you and help you every step of the way. I love helping you to know what your body needs and recover faster. So the next time you catch a cold virus, you're like, I got this, I know exactly what to do. I got all the stuff I need. I'm going to get through this. And I know. And then you start to feel more and more confident that you're not going to end up in needing antibiotics and steroids. Because every time we need antibiotics and steroids, it just makes, it disrupts our gut and can weaken our immune system and makes us more susceptible to the next infection. So if you need the antibiotics and steroids, you should definitely get them, but we try to avoid them. And even if you're taking antibiotics or steroids, you're going to still want to do all this other stuff because the antibiotics just kill bacteria. They don't actually help you, your body heal from the infection. So you're going to, if you need to take antibiotics or if you need to take steroids to help your body recover, do that. And also do the herbs, the nutrients, the self care that's going to help you recover faster and prevent the next infection. Thanks so much for joining me for this video and this episode of How Humans Heal. I hope that gives you some more ideas, ideas of how you can be proactive about yourself and your health related to cold viruses. We've been hearing from a lot of people recently who've been catching every kind of cold. So I wanted to give this video to you and say, okay, I got you. You are now going to be covered and set and prepared and get through this and be able to recover and feel better afterwards and feel confident that you would know what to do the next time. So if, by the way, if you get ear infections, there's also ear drops you can, the garlic mullen ear drops you can drip in your ears. That helps prevent ear infections. And if you have a child who has a cold, then let me know because I also do help a lot with children going through colds and ear infections. The one thing is, of course we got to drop the doses for children and we, there's certain substances we wouldn't use with children. Definitely. If a child gets a fever, it's more important to address sooner. Right. So if they, if their temperature goes up to 103 as a, as a toddler, a baby, then that's more concerning than it would be for an adult. So you're going to be more likely to track the temperature of the baby or child. So test their temperature like in their ear or their forehead and check are they getting a fever, make sure they're staying hydrated. And then there are things though that you can do for children as well. You know, oftentimes I find that children are very happy to take herbal liquids in a glyceride form. So I can guide you on that as well as the silver, the liquid silver we can use in these short term forms to help to be antiviral, antimicrobial, immune, supportive. And the diet changes really make a difference for kids as well as the, what I call the magic socks, the cold socks on the feet. So there's things you can do also for children to help them get better faster and prevent the use of antibiotics whenever possible. So again, thanks for joining me. I hope this was helpful. Be sure to download the cold and flu guide down below and I look forward to connecting with you in the next episode of How Humans Heal. Take care. Thanks for listening to How Humans Heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review and for more research resources, visit drdonnie. Com.