Natural Remedies for Illness

When someone isn’t feeling well at our house, I love to use natural remedies to bring comfort and hopefully shorten the severity and duration of the illness.

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Natural Remedies

For us, natural remedies can be something as simple as increasing Vitamin C intake, making a huge pot of chicken soup (made with homemade bone broth and plenty of garlic), and drinking herbal tea.

There are some good online resources that provide helpful home remedies for common illnesses.

However, I prefer having a physical book handy for easy access when illness strikes my family. Here are some of my favorite book resources for natural remedies:

• Rosemary Gladstar’s Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health
• Natural Healing for Babies and Children
• Dr. Christopher’s Herbal Home Health Care
• Rosemary Gladstar’s Medicinal Herbs
• Be Your Own Doctor

My two favorite books of all are Aviva Romm’s Natural Healing for Babies and Children, and Rachel Weaver’s Be Your Own Doctor. If I had to narrow it down to two, I’d probably pick these two.

We found the Natural Healing for Babies and Children book on a sale table at a bookstore over 10 years ago. Our copy is falling apart and there is a much newer edition available (and Aviva is now an MD), so we may have to upgrade one of these days! 

Rachel Weaver is a master herbalist with a lot of wisdom for treating common ailments at home. She’s written several other books besides the one mentioned above.  

Essential Oils

I also really enjoy using essential oils to help with many health conditions. I have a dear friend (a widow in our church) who is my “doTERRA Lady,” and she has a wealth of knowledge to share. Several times I’ve asked her for advice, and she always has an idea for me to try.

I turn to this book frequently for comprehensive essential oil information. It’s fairly specific to doTERRA brand oils, but the basic information works well with other brands, too.

I’m not loyal to just one brand of essential oils, as I feel there are a lot of quality ones out there. I really love the Plant Therapy essential oils. They’re organic, the quality is excellent, and the price is reasonable.

I also have a whole home arsenal of vitamins, herbs, and tinctures that I like to use when someone comes down with something. Here are just a few of my must-haves:

• Olba’s Pastille Lozenges for sore throats and coughs
• Zarbee’s Naturals Cough Syrup
• Emergen-C
• Activated Charcoal Powder and capsules
• zinc lozenges
• elderberry syrup (Learn how to make your own elderberry syrup here!)
• Umcka elderberry syrup
• Umcka ColdCare
• TriLight Lympha Rub (get 20% off your first order through my link)
• TriLight Lungs Plus
• Throat tea
• slippery elm powder
• Echinacea and Goldenseal tincture

I love having my natural medicine cabinet well-stocked before every cold and flu season hits!

Read the post below to see what I consider necessities to have on hand:

What are some of your favorite natural home remedies for illness?