Home remedies, the Dr in your kitchen.

This weekend youngest son went to bed fine on Saturday and then in the early hours of Sunday morning, can into our bed and coughed like a trooper for the next four hours.
So come getting up time something had to be done.
I found a dusty bottle of Tixylix that was still in date and gave him a dose.

Did it help his cough?
Nope.

Did he get worse?
Yup.

Now he was feverish with spots of hi colour on his cheeks in an otherwise pale face.

The trouble is, when you have kids that don't eat much junk, highly coloured and flavored medicine can do more harm than good. Check out the additives on the back...sugar free? Well they sweeten it with something and no sweetener is good or even benign for you.

A quick trawl online brought up a few home remedies and as I had nothing to loose I thought "Why not?"

First of all I made up a quick honey and lemon mix. Now Honey is not Vegan.

Me and Kim quickly discussed this and came to the conclusion that we would buy a jar of the most local, home produced honey we could find that day (from Turriff so not bad!). My feeling is that is we can find a regular supply of home produced honey then I am happy to use it medicinally.

So I mixed the juice of 1 (organic) lemon with a good spoon on honey and then doled out this vit C rich, cough soothing mixture at a rate of 2 spoons every hour or so.

Then I made up an Expectorant.
Chop up 1 onion and 3 cloves of garlic and place in a deep bowl. Cover with sugar and leave for a couple of hours.
What you get is a fantastic syrup that  actually tastes alright!

Within a few minuets you could really hear him getting behind the cough rather than just making that awful "hu hu hu" dry sound.

Verdict?

Well  the cough dissipated rapidly and by bedtime was very light. I kept him home from school today but that was more because he slept a fair bit yesterday and didn't eat much. In fact I haven't heard him cough all morning and he's back to being argumentative and loud!

Desperate to ward off any nasties before our trip down south on Thursday me and Kim drank down cups of lemon and ginger tea with added fresh lemon and honey for a vitamin kick, and for dinner that night I made a power soup of Nettles, lungwort, plantain, dandelion, onions, garlic, celery and potato.

Despite having youngest coughing in my face all Saturday night in bed *touch wood* I feel fine.

Do you guys have any home remedies you want to share?