Farmacy reminders in flu season

Just a reminder as sickness swirls that ordinary foods in your fridge and pantry can help you get to Spring unscathed. Food is the original medicine and still works if you know how to deploy it. Mostly you need to eat medicinally to keep your immune system boosted, your defenses strong. Tradition can guide you. 

Sunshine is critical and you can eat it in parsley and cilantro, spinach and other greens that soak up the sun's energy as they grow. The plants transform sunshine into chlorophyll, which gives them green color and us solar energy. We can also drink it in milk.  After all, grass grows green from sunshine, cows chew the grass and export it as milk. Sunshine chlorophyll gives us energy, keeps blood flowing clear, kills odors and possibly harmful viruses and bacteria too. Eat green. 

Antibiotics
  Honey: use it on a sore throat, a cut or wound, swallow it so it gets to an upset stomach. A British doctor, frustrated by lack of medicines on the body strewn battlefield of WWI in Greece, discovered his desperate act of slathering local honey on bloody wounds stopped the onrush of sepsis and kept soldiers alive. Bees have been onto something for millennia.  Don't underestimate real honey.   
  Turmeric: South Asians ritually rub the ground up root on raw chicken and beef, certain it kills surface bacteria and science has begun to agree. The root itself has proven to be a powerful anti-inflammatory, one that upsets the system a lot less than acidic ibuprofen (aka Aleve, Advil, Motrin).                

Body warmers
   ginger
   cinnamon
   meat fat
This is why they are in all the traditional Christmas baked goods (the fat is in mince pie): as a gift to fire up metabolism to heat the body in the coldest times. So if you feel a chill, take some spice easily in tea. Or eat a chunk of cooked meat.  
  And yes, scientists now agree your grandmother was right: chicken soup cures a lot of ills.                 

Lung cleaners
  garlic
  onion  
 If you've ever wondered why garlic ends up making your breath smell, it's because the sulfur it contains goes straight to the lungs, not the stomach. The ancients called it a demon killer because it seemed to stop coughs and minor lung infections. Doctors confirm its medical prowess. Onions have sulfur as well, not as much, usually in the outer rings.      

Sinus aids
   arugula and radicchio
   broccolini/broccoli rabe
   bitter melon   
   citrus peel   
I've written about this before because I experimented with the thesis that bitter foods stimulate receptors in the tongue that open sinuses and found it to be true. I've been able to manage a blocked sinus without surgery or infection by eating bitter foods at least once a day.  A handful of arugula on a salad or radicchio salad, pasta with broccoli rabe, lemon or orange zest in my yogurt or oatmeal.   
  Ajwain Seed aka carom is known to cure nasal blockages and coughs by loosening mucous so it flows. You can make tea from them or throw them in with lentils.  

 Lubes
   olive oil
   prunes
   nuts and seeds
   bran including brown rice and whole wheat
Dark cold winter encourages us to eat starchy, heavy foods like potatoes, pasta and barley that can clog the system,  so it's important to feed it fiber and lube it with oil. Add pine nuts to your pasta, toasted walnuts and pumpkin seeds to your salad, prunes to your yogurt or oatmeal or make a tagine of meat with them. Put a tad too much olive oil on your salad or pasta. Use olive oil instead of butter when baking a cake.

  Vitamin C
   grapefruit/ Pomelo
   mandarins/clementines
   lemons/Meyer lemons
   limes 
Mother Nature gives us citrus in winter because it's another form of sunshine for the body: Vitamin C which fortifies our immune system at a time we are mostly inside where germs are everywhere.  Remember, lime squirted on raw fish kills all the bacteria on it to create safe ceviche; it's powerful stuff. 

And finally, yet again, the traditional, trusty Nepali spice tea that cures a cough:

*ajwain: thins excretions to smooth digestion, break coughs

*garlic: sulfur cleans lungs

*ginger: raises body temp, heat get things flowing

*turmeric root: known antibiotic

*fenugreek: mucilage coats stomach/throat lining, soothes inflammation

*cumin seed: stimulates digestive enzymes, detoxes liver

*salt (Himalayan red salt if you have it)

*black peppercorns: antibiotic, increases hydrochloric acid

*jimbu: this is a native high mountain herb, a cross between sage and parsley. The best substitution here is parsley for its powerful chlorophyll content.

Combine a teaspoon of each in 2 cups of water, boil until water is reduced by half, strain and drink. It tastes more pleasant than Chinese herbal concoctions and actually works.

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This is all grandmotherly advice based on experience and education . It has not been officially vetted and approved by the FDA.