So as you know I'm sadly allergic to paracetamol/ibuprofen since 2012 ish hah. And ever since I discovered this sad trait of mine, I've been looking for alternatives to cure my fever. Usually when I have an inflamed throat, flu etc, I will easily pop some medicine and feel better. But most flu medicines contain paracetamol/ibuprofen and thus I can't take them. Well there's one flu medicine that I take but it's just nasal decongestant. It doesn't bring down the fever. So not that effective.
One of the alternatives that really work for me is garlic. I usually eat like 2-3 cloves of raw garlic three times a day when I have flu/sore throat. And it really works, I'll feel much better within a day or two. However garlic has a bad side effect of giving me a gassy stomach, or gastric itself. Also it makes my mouth/breath smell wonderful. There's one time when I ate garlic before dinner. Note that my stomach has been empty for 6 hours. And I got a horrible gastric that accompanied my bed time.
Recently I was reading up on a few articles about herbs that help infection. Garlic is one of them. Others include tumeric, ginger, fennel, thyme, rosemary. One ingredient caught my eye and it is chamomile! Well I'm not a huge fan of chamomile but I'm okay with it, since it's readily available and easily consumable as well. It's just in the form of tea and I can drink it easily, throughout the day.
So last month I had a really bad sore throat and I was also coughing badly. I had fever on the first day and so I decided to put chamomile to test. And it really worked! Well not quickly but okay here's how it went. On the day which I had fever, I drank lots of water, and also drank three cups of chamomile tea. After my second cup my fever actually went down a little. I drank it again before bed and the next day the fever was gone. But my annoying sore throat was still there.
So I continued drinking chamomile and in 2 days' time, the sore throat improved a lot actually. Well I was still having cough but it was just like those lingering and remaining cough. I continued drinking chamomile for the next week and the cough subsided eventually. No medicines, nothing!
Okay I'm not really sure whether it was just my body that fought the infection, or if chamomile does indeed have medicinal and anti-inflammatory properties. I do read that Native Americans used chamomile to heal wounds by applying crushed chamomile flowers on the wound. And they also brew the flowers to drink to aid in healing. So it does work I guess? Well I'm just happy that I have an alternative now. I'm eager to explore more alternatives, since I really rely on them! :P
I'm quite intrigued by tumeric because in traditional Indian medicine practices, tumeric is like an awesome herb that treats almost everything haha. There are articles on treatment of diabetes, anti-cancer properties and also anti inflammatory ones too. There's even a study in India where two groups of patients with flu were treated, one with tumeric only, and the other with normal flu medicines.
And the ones treated with tumeric has a faster recovery.
The only "side effect" that I get from chamomile is... I feel more relaxed throughout the day. Well it is good, but sometimes I become so relaxed to an extent that I feel sleepy haha.
Alright that's all for this random post on chamomile! I hope you can give it a try too, if we can go back to nature to heal, I don't think it's a disadvantage at all. Hope you had a good week and here's to another fantastic week to end off February! :) Take care everyone.
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