Everything’s wet & cold - how we stay above the fray of germs during snot season

The photo accompanying this post has nothing to do with cold season. This is me with my maternal grandmother, Victory Lorraine, who was beautiful even when she was sick. I miss her, this classy, funny, smart lady.

So! We live in a beautiful, lush, green city that turns into a moldy swampland October through May. Masks and handwashing can’t keep the snot from running, but it does help. So do rest and plenty of sleep. Lots of sleep. Sleep! Go to bed at 8pm if you’re weirdly tired and can’t explain why. Turn off your phone. No one will know. And if they know do we really care what they think?

This short article from Canadian magazine EcoParent contains the juice of what I was going to write, so I’ll save myself the writing time and link you here. The tl;dr is: vitamins A&D, garlic, sleep, and zinc even though it’s usually pretty gross. We up vitamin D drops during the dark months and keep a happy light on in the dining room during breakfast each weekday (I don’t get money from anyone I link to, I just like my Verilux because I’ve knocked it off the table 27 times and it still works). When we’re clearly coming down with something, I crush a garlic clove or two and put it on a piece of heavily buttered toast and just know no one will want to kiss me for 24 hours. If you let that garlic sit for 10-15 minutes and add a pinch of kosher salt, you can up the medicinal properties and cut down on the garlic farts. Just saying.

Soups are your friend. Andrew Weil’s Immunity Soup (thanks Mom for the link!) is mild and comforting. I have never been able to locate astragalus root and instead just add a couple drops of astragalus tincture to each cup when I serve it. Also I use chicken broth for everything, as having multiple kinds of broth in my pantry is too confusing when I’m sick and don’t have extra brain cells to read many labels.

And did I mention sleep? Please sleep. Let yourself sleep. Maybe I should add that to the back of my business cards. “Go to sleep. You’re welcome.”