I haven't had a cold for 10 years! My secret...

Too many of my friends are sick! Here's the secret to staying well.

The last cold I had was the worst I had ever experienced. I'll spare you the details, but just know that it was so bad I had some serious complications that cost me too much!

I'm not going into all my rationale for how I figured out how to stay well. (You're welcome.) I'm just going to give you the facts about how to get well and stay well, especially during the winter/holiday season. If you have questions, or there is something I need to clarify, please comment!

Pretty much everyone is exposed to the same germs, but not everyone gets sick. The key is to get your immune system up and keep it up. The number one cause of immune suppression at this time of year (besides all the holiday stress we let ourselves in for) is SUGAR! Face it, it starts at Halloween and continues through New Years. We start getting colds right after Halloween, suffer through November and December and are the sickest in January.

Here's my prescription for avoiding colds and flu:

1. Never get a flu shot. Never! (I stopped getting them, and I stopped getting sick!) Raise your immune level to ward off evil germs.
2. Take lots of vitamin D3 -- most important of all. Read all the rationale for that online.
3. Get the Traditional Medicinals Seasonal Herb Tea Sampler. Or a box each of Echinacea Plus and Throat Coat. The instant you feel those lymph nodes swelling, start swilling these!
4. Take essential fatty acids (EFA's) daily. (Not just during cold & flu season)
5. A lot of people take extra vitamin C, but I find I get enough in my daily vitamin and the food I eat.
6. Stay away from juice (way too much sugar in concentration). Eat whole fruits instead.
7. What about sweets -- gotta have something now and then. For your drinks, use liquid Stevia. Yes, it's expensive, but I buy the 4 oz. bottles of Sweet Leaf from Amazon. I use 6 or 7 drops in everything I drink (except for water), and one bottle lasts me for months! I maybe go through 2 or 2 1/2 bottles a year.
8. If you must have holiday goodies (and who doesn't?) bake your own and pick your battles when you're at a holiday function. Bake your own with Whey Low sugar products -- found at www.wheylow.com. I use it in everything I bake without exception. I buy the sampler pack which has 2 pound packages of everything they make -- gold, maple, ice cream, powdered, and regular or diabetic granulated. You absolutely cannot tell the difference in taste or texture between Whey Low and regular table sugar.
9. Stay away from the obvious crap - doughnuts, store bought cookies and candies, grocery store pastries and pies. If you're going to indulge, at least make it worth it -- choose a high quality pastry from an artisan bakery or something homemade (use your best judgment).
10. Just say no to holiday stress. Start thinking about what it is that stresses you at this time of year and change it. Don't take or make any excuses. You and your health are far more important than any holiday activity, even (and perhaps especially) guilt-laden obligations. If you know it's going to stress you out, don't do it, or don't go.

Immune health starts in the digestive tract. If you eat/drink lots of sugar and high carb nastiness (think HFCS), plus have had rounds of antibiotics at least a couple of times a year, your immune system is pretty well decimated. If you eat lots of sugar and have had lots of antibiotics, you probably have more sick days than well. The antibiotics strip your digestive tract of all flora, good and bad. The problem is that intestinal flora is what protects you. Okay, okay, I said I wasn't going to get into the rationale, so TRUST ME. You have to get your intestinal tract healthy in order to have a healthy immune system.


It begins with all the yeast build up that happens once your gut is stripped by antibiotics. Then you feed it with carbs and sugar, and the yeast growth goes out of control. Just look up the symptoms of "leaky gut syndrome" and see how many of them you have. Once the yeast in your system goes bonkers, it starts attaching itself to the lining of the stomach and eventually perforates it (think ivy on brick), allowing undigested food particles into your blood stream. Then your immune response kicks in, treating everything as a foreign object. Your immune system can only keep that up for so long, and then you start getting sick. What do you do? More antibiotics. It becomes a vicious cycle.


I did my first candida cleanse with nothing more than diet modification and Kyolic Garlic. Garlic has antibiotic properties, too, but it is pickier about what it kills off. In this instance, it will kill off your yeast. Follow the online instructions for a good yeast cleans. Then start building your system back up with pro-biotics. Once you rebuild, you can maintain with good yogurt. That means good, organic, plain yogurt, not fruit (and sugar) filled nastiness. Once I saw the benefits of plain yogurt on my system, it became my substitute for sour cream, commercial leavening, ice cream, etc. Can't stand it plain? Add a little Stevia to it. I mix it with my granola, use it in a lot of my baking, make homemade frozen yogurt with it -- yum! I couldn't go back to the other stuff now.


So does that mean you have to give up all sugar forever? No. Once you are cleaned up (and there is a process, so be sure to research it online), pay attention to your body! I found that when I would eat certain things (commercial ice cream and those nasty, but wonderful coffee drinks in the Circle K's -- you know, the Pumpkin Spice, Caramel, Vanilla, etc.) were my triggers. I figured it out because I would eat or drink one of them, and within a few hours I would have swollen lymph nodes. If I ignored it, it would progress to sore throat, then nasal drainage, and I would feel feverish.


So, at the very first sign of swollen lymph nodes, don't ask yourself, "what have I been exposed to now?", rather ask yourself, "what nastiness did I just eat?"