“Hundreds of medications are either running low or out of stock completely, with some store shelves depleted of children’s allergy medication, adult cough and cold syrup, eye drops and even some oral antibiotics, industry experts say.”
Yet more criminal behaviour from the string pullers as they seek to feed the narrative that hospitals are overflowing with children and people who can’t fight off the current round of viruses and bacterial infections that occur at this time of year.
However, all is not lost! There ARE activities you can do and things you can buy or grow, that will get you and your household through the holiday seasons just fine.
For starters, figure out non-sugar, non-candy ways of celebrating the various holidays this year. Pancakes with elderberry syrup on a holiday morning for example. If you can’t get or find it too expensive, check into Pacific Northwestern or North Eastern sources of pure maple syrup and compare prices. The Maple Syrup doesn’t have Elderberry’s nutritional/medicinal profile, but it does have a good number of trace minerals that the body uses.
Make apple sauces, pies, glazes, etc, without sugar this year, using honey below boiling when making yourself. Be sure to add your pie spices in abundance.
Make pumpkin purees and add your pumpkin spices!!! Be warned however if using cloves in that blend, it tends to overpower the other spices, so either leave it out of the spice blend for baking purposes, or only put in half to a quarter of the smallest measure of the other spices. For example, our favourite blend is 1 part Cinnamon, half part each Ginger and Nutmeg. If I was to add cloves to that, I’d add 1/4 part cloves or even just 1/8th, to reduce how badly it overpowers the other spices. Do NOT use sugar in your holiday baking this year!!! Sweeten with unpastueurized honey ONLY!
Make your own hot cocoa with non-irradiated cocoa powder, mull it with pumpkin spices, sweeten with honey, and add regular milk or cream to taste.
Make your own “chocolate bars” using equal parts coconut oil, cocoa powder, and honey. Blend everything together and pour into a tray or into moulds with your favourite nuts or dried fruit.
Stay away from caramels this year, hard candies, brightly-coloured breakfast cereals, store-bought cookies and cakes, and other treats that contain high amounts of sugars, food colourings, preservatives, etc.
Put the health of your household ahead of the wants of others this year, and put everyone to bed at regular hours this season! The body does most of it’s repair while sleeping, particularly the brain. You can’t enjoy the holidays when you’re ill. So choose to stay healthy so that you can engage in the things that make for healthy, fun memories this year.
Activities can include making non-GMO popcorn and threading it together for Christmas garlands.
Throwing cranberries in the oven to dry at 250 for a couple hours, then string them up for garlands. Bonus points for being able to eat them in January after the celebrations are over to stay boosted while others continue to fight a health battle the string pullers don’t want won.
Go for walks in the woods and bring home fir, spruce, and pine bows to decorate with. Don’t forget to snap off these needles into your teas for a health boost as well over the holidays. (not for pregnant women)
Our tiny home can’t handle moisture too well, but most traditional homes do just fine. So put a pot on the stove, or get out the spare crockpot, and throw in a couple navel orange rinds, a few chopped up apples, a handful of pumpkin spice blend, a few tablespoons of mint, and a handful or two of broken up fir, spruce and/or pine needles for good measure. Your home will smell wonderful while cleaning the air, and breathing in the scents will help keep you healthy as well.
The biggest thing to do however, is to stock up your pantry, being sure to leave behind stock on the shelves for other families who also need it as much as you do.
Head to your local healthfood store and buy Elderberry syrup, yarrow, prickly lettuce tincture, etc. Look up herbalists in your area and see what they have on hand for expectorants and decongestant herbal blends. I say in your area, because if they are deliberately overflowing hospitals for the sake of the official narrative by withholding easily-accessible mainstream meds from stores, who knows what roadblocks they will put in the way of alternative medicine delivery too. Purchase Oil of Oregano at your healthfood store. Get clove, lavender, mint and eucalyptus extracts (not essential oils) to use both topically, in your diffusers, and to add to tea and cocoa. Purchase large bags of non-irradiated cocoa (not dutch) to make your own hot cocoa drink and to include in any baking or sauces. Stay away from pre-packaged hot chocolate or hot cocoa blends. Cocoa powder has many healthy benefits, but the added ingredients in the pre-packaged blends and bars often are not healthy for you. Catnip in bulk, fights colds as well. If you can’t find straight, unblended catnip at the healthfood or bulkfood store, grow your own at home. It is a member of the mint family and can be added to teas, infusions, poultices, etc.
Head to your local grocery store and buy a couple jugs of cranberry juice and bags of frozen cranberries and reserve for medicinal use only! Buy non-pasteurized honey for the same purpose. Buy large bags of fresh garlic and onions, or buy them powdered if your household doesn’t like them fresh, but don’t buy them salted! Add this to as many lunch and dinner meals as you can! Buy frozen blueberries and berry blends with blueberries in them. Purchase chicken on sale, bone-in, and make broth from the bones, skins, and fats. Grandma’s chicken soup remedy worked for curing colds and flus! Bone broth made from beef bones also goes a long way in these times.
Cinnamon, Ginger, buy these at your local bulk food store. While you’re at the bulkfood store, buy a large bag of pumpkin seeds, and large bags of crushed mint leaves, chamomile, turmeric, and black pepper. Black tea in bulk also helps out with colds and flu bugs. While you’re in the tea section at the bulkfood store, pick up a large bag or two of chai containing cinnamon, ginger, cloves, anise, and if it doesn’t contain it, get a bag of crushed licorice root to add at home. A large bag of crushed parsley and thyme is helpful too, particularly if a family member comes down with intestinal worms such as pinworm during this time. Oil of Oregano, 5 – 7 drops under the tongue, held, then swallowed with lemon juice 3 to 5 times a day also kills pin worm (household true story!).
Make a non-alcoholic mulled cranberry juice on the stove with cranberry juice, lemon concentrate, a half teaspoon of cinnamon, quarter teaspoon of ginger, and a tablespoon of honey, heat, and serve for your beverage at dinner, bedtime snack, or breakfast. If the cranberry and lemon concentrate are too strong for you, cut with water.
Conditions that require antibiotics are typically things like ear infections, tonsilitis, bronchitis, bacterial pneumonia, strep throat, etc. Conditions that are viral are your colds, flus, viral pneumonia, rhinitis, sinusitis (though sometimes this can get bad enough to need antibiotics if you didn’t catch it right away).
If your home allows for a vertical garden inside anywhere, or if you have room for potted plants on coffee tables, book shelves, etc, then consider growing the following: chives, oregano, parsley, lemongrass, basil, mint (of any variety, spear and pepper ideally), lavender, ginger, aloe vera, etc.
