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Herbal Remedies- Sage for Runny Nose

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While searching online for herb remedies, I saw sage as a runny nose remedy on many web sites in every form from tinctures to elixirs to teas.  I tried it last night, and it worked well.  TOO well.  I took about one teaspoon crushed sage mixed into a little raw honey.  It dried my sinuses out until they ached and I couldn’t breathe out of my nose on one side! I considered it to be a good trade considering what I had been experiencing and using a neti pot helped considerably with the discomfort.  It fixed my runny nose for several hours, well into the night.  It also stopped the coughing from post-nasal drip which in turn helped my sore throat, which was a huge blessing.

This morning, I gave each of the kids a pinch and I took two pinches mixed into a tiny amount of raw honey.   Neither of the kids complained about taking it like that.  I suspected they’d object to the tea, so this was a great solution.  It is working extremely well, with no dryness or discomfort. I imagine if your runny nose was severe, you’d need a higher dose.  Most websites recommended dosing it two to three times a day.  I will experiment today with how often I need to dose me and the kids to be effective without drying us out. I am especially anxious to see how well it works to stop post-nasal drip that causes my kids to cough at night.  I’ve been getting up twice a night to give them Ivy Calm for multiple nights now, and if this works I will switch to this instead as it is much cheaper.

Last year before Thanksgiving, I had ordered a one-pound bag of rubbed sage from Frontier, not realizing that it would be cups and cups of sage!  So now I am glad to have one more use for this herb. I’ve been using sage tincture as an ingredient in mouthwash, and I believe now that I will make an elixir of it, too.

WARNING: Sage is a drying herb.  If you are nursing, it will reduce or stop your milk supply.  I would avoid it entirely while nursing, especially if your supply is borderline.  It is also listed as a uterine stimulant and an herb to be avoided during pregnancy.  However, I have seen no warning to avoid a culinary dose of this herb during pregnancy, so please do your own homework before considering this remedy if you are pregnant or breastfeeding.

Shared at Nourishing Treasures and Wildcrafting Wednesday.

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Herbal Remedies- Coughs I

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 Ginger Honey cough syrup, photo courtesy of Kayla at Life in Small Town, Wyoming

Recently, we’ve had the yearly sinus fun that comes from the wild weather swings of Spring.  We had short sleeve weather, two days of freezing, then we hit 90 degrees the next day.  This was compounded by us doing some heavy gardening and cleaning out the chicken coop, exposing us to a lot of dust.  The weather and the dust caused my husband and son to have post-nasal drip and a nagging cough from the resulting tickle in the throat.

I am always on a quest to find cheap and natural ways to help treat ‘what ails ya.’  A few weeks ago I read about making a cough syrup by very thinly slicing a hand-sized piece of peeled ginger, [Read more…] about Herbal Remedies- Coughs I

Herbal Remedies- Cough II

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Early last week, I came down with a head cold.  When I became ill, we assumed it was the flu as I had been exposed to someone with the flu a few days before, so I treated it the wrong way.  By the time we realized it was just a cold, it was too late to get my normal measures to work as most natural remedies work best if you use them at the onset of an illness.   The miserable portion of the cold was over fairly quickly, but the cough hung on.  And on.  And on.  Now, ten days later, I’m finally up the upswing but I’m still coughing and my stomach muscles are shot.  I’m not prone to lung problems, so this really caught me off guard.

Generally speaking, I do not wish to suppress a wet, productive cough because getting the mucus out of your body is the quickest way to heal.  So I focus on ways to break up and remove the mucus, and only stop the coughing at night so I can rest.  For dry, non-productive coughs or coughs caused by a tickle in the throat, coating the throat can bring relief.

The first way to deal with a productive cough is to lay over a balance ball or on a slant board, head down.  That allows gravity to drain the mucus out of your lungs and get it out quicker.  If you are dealing with someone elderly, infirm or a child, you might want to consider very gentle percussive therapy, which achieves the same results.  The more you drain your lungs, the less likely you are to develop bronchitis and the quicker you will heal.  Spending 15 minutes in this position would greatly cut down on the coughing for a few hours.  I do this three or four times a day and always before bed, as it would allow me to fall asleep easier.

The second help has been slippery elm lozenges.  I simply mix slippery elm bark powder with a little raw honey. Add more powder until the honey can’t hold any more, then roll it into lozenge-size balls and store them in the fridge.  The slippery elm coats your throat and stops the tickles.  If you use honey infused with an herb like ginger, so much the better.  I use these when someone calls or I otherwise want to try to prevent coughs for a few minutes while I’m interacting with other people.

Finally, when I must sleep at night, Ivy leaf extract has been wonderful to stop the cough.  Bronchial Soothe syrup for the kids and pills for me will stop the coughing for 4 hours.  The only downside to this is that it only lasts four hours.  So you will wake up coughing in the night and have to take another dose, or get up and dose the kids.  However, this is the only natural cough syrup that I have tried that has consistently worked, and worked well for both me and the kids.  You can grow your own ground ivy and make tinctures or syrups, if you desire.

Disclaimer: If you order the Bronchial Soothe or other products from Iherb.com using the link above, I will receive a small percentage of your purchase in store credit. This post is in no way endorsed by Iherb.com.

How do you deal with winter coughs?

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