The dreaded sick season! This doesn’t always have to be a stressful and overwhelming time. Having the right mindset along with knowledge and helpful tools can lessen the stress, shorten the illness, and have your family prepared year after year.
It’s important to realize that we cannot control illness, we can simply support our bodies through it. And while sickness might be frustrating and inconvenient, our immune system learns and grows each time we are sick. When our kids are sick, though, it is always a bit more challenging for numerous reasons. So, today in this blog, we hope to help ease some of those frustrations and moments of “I don’t know what to give my sick child”! Please remember, though, that this is not medical advice, but rather, this is advice from one mom to another. What works for our family and our kids might not necessarily work for yours, but in general, these are some of our go-tos during illness and during sick season to just support our bodies overall.
Immune support
We do like to use supplements when our kids are sick to help support their bodies, and a few of our favorites are:
BioRay’s Immune – This is great for supporting a child’s immune system in time of sickness, specifically the lung, throat, nasal irritations, tiredness, and body discomfort. It uses natural fruits and herbs to help the body balance the immune system. You can also use this during sick season, but it can be less frequently used when your child is not sick.
Orthomolecular’s ViraKid – This is a personal favorite of the Mitchell children! Claire and Phillip try their hardest to get their kids to take a multivitamin on a daily basis, but ViraKid is what the kids in this household prefer. Filled with great support from things like zinc and vitamin C to elderberry, this is a great one to have on hand during sick season and for when kids do get sick.
Activated charcoal – A little dab will do you here! Activated charcoal is great to use during sickness to help the body rid itself of any unwanted visitors (i.e. viruses or bacteria) that want to stick around. Parent pro tip: mix it into water bottles – a little bit at a time.
Diet
Did you know that research suggests that when consuming sugar (and sick), the immune system is weakened and loses its ability to fight off viruses as effectively? So, our best advice for when your little ones are sick (and even when adults are sick, too) is to really cut the sugar. Other diet tips to help boost the immune system include juicing fruits and vegetables like carrots, ginger, turmeric, and other anti-inflammatory foods that help support the body and its ability to naturally fight off any infection present.
Other diet tips include focusing solely on whole foods — things that come directly from the earth – and hydrating the water with lots of good, ole fashioned, plain water. Now, yes, electrolytes can also be helpful in times of dehydration! Some of our favorite brands are Just Ingredients, Ultima, LMNT, but we just don’t want to consume a lot of sodas, fruit juices that are high in sugar, or other drinks that can cause even more hydration.
Lifestyle and At-Home Tips
Our other go-to tips for during viral season include simple, at-home things that we can do every day like removing our shoes when we come into our homes. Taking your shoes off decreases the amount of germs that you carry into your house along with other at-home tips. When sick, we like to use cleaners like BrioTech and even some essential oils (but quality does matter here!) to help our bodies recover well and to support our immune system.
Specific sicknesses and Our Top Tips
Again, this is not medical advice. Please consult your primary care physician before attempting any of the following recommendations. These are merely suggestions of what we as moms with young children do to help support their bodies.
Curious about more of these tips? Purchase this book! This is where they came from: Natural Remedies for Kids
Cold/Flu
Vitamin C can be helpful in boosting the immune system as can be simple saline solution to help break up the mucous produced by an upper respiratory infection or a cold/flu virus. There are other teas and essential oils that can support the immune system when dealing with respiratory issues; some suggestions include mullein tea (Natural Remedies for Kids cautions against mullein tea in children with asthma or cystic fibrosis but recommends it for respiratory ailments in general) and rosemary essential oil (applied externally and diluted in a carrier oil such as organic fractionated coconut oil).
Sore Throat
Teas are great for a sore throat – ginger tea with honey is great for a sore throat (remember, though, that honey isn’t to be given to babies under age 1).
Fever
Fever is the body’s way of fighting off a virus, and so we always try to continue and give lots of fluids to our kids, whether it be through water or warm teas, in order to help keep them hydrated. Vitamin C is also a wonderful immune system support here as well, and essential oils like lavender can really help keep us comfortable when we are sick with a fever (again, it is recommended to dilute essential oils in a carrier oil when applying them topically).
Stomach Bug/GI
When our kids have the stomach bug, our biggest goal is to keep them hydrated and give them immune system support as possible (sometimes it unfortunately comes right back up). If tolerated, a little bit of activated charcoal given away from any immune support can help the body clear out what’s causing the sickness. Other immune supports in times of a stomach bug or GI discomfort that we have used (depending on each situation and each child, of course) include ViraKid, Calm the Storm, or BioRay’s Immune Support.
Do you have more questions about how to support your child’s overall health or in times of sickness? Feel free to give us a call or join our email list. We love to share resources and what we’ve learned over the years of researching and having our own children!
