Walking In A Winter Wonderland…The 2022 Version
♪♪ Sneezes ring. Are ya listenin’? ♪♪
– Doc Jones
♪ On our sleeves, goobers glistenin’! ♪
♪♪ It’s cold in the yard… ♪♪
♪ We’re sneezin’ real hard ♪
♪♪ And Coughin’ in a winter wonderland. ♪♪
♪♪ Gone away is the summer. ♪♪
♪ Now we’re sick. It’s a bummer. ♪
♪♪ But hey, don’t dismay ♪
♪ There’s good news today ♪♪
♪♪ Coughin’ in a winter wonderland ♪♪
♪ In the cupboard we could poke some tinctures, ♪
♪ And perhaps a tasty tea or two. ♪
♪♪ Don’t know where to get them?! ♪♪
♪ Here’s your link sir. ♪
♪♪ Now you can buy some tasty herbals too! ♪♪
♪ Now the bugs don’t annoy us. ♪
♪ And our winter is joyous! ♪♪
♪♪ Cause we used our brain ♪
♪♪ And learned to abstain… ♪♪
♪♪ From coughin’ in a winter wonderland ♪
Winter time is upon us, that joyous holiday season when we gather with family and friends to renew our love, give gifts and share all the exciting new respiratory pathogens of the season. We sit by the fire with our adorable grandchild on our lap. He tells us we are the best grandma(pa) in the whole world and then sneezes on our pumpkin pie. Every year it’s the same; joyful connections and wonderful parties and events followed by a week or two of feeling lousy because we shook hands with the wrong fellow at the school concert.
Certainly there are things we can do once we get sick. But maybe this year it’s time to get a little more pro-active about our health.
The fact is there are some wonderful plants for warding off respiratory viruses…colds, flus, coronas, you name it. Herbs have been handily fighting all of them off forever and their capability is nothing to sneeze at. I’ve found that taking herbs as soon as I suspect I was exposed to a bug is much more effective that starting to take them three days after I’m sick.
Three of my favorites are pine needle, sweet wormwood and chaga. All three of those have strong antiviral properties for respiratory bugs in general and are particularly good at inhibiting coronavirus attachment and reproduction (which is handy during Covid Pandemics). I also usually do some Immune Support. Cold Away and ShooFloo. If I get good herbs on board early in the process, I rarely get sick. And, if I do, it’s usually a much milder case.
There are other respiratory herbs that are great to have on hand as well. Cough suppressants like mullein or wild cherry bark, expectorants like elecampane or mullein, antihistamines like nettles or Brigham tea, bronchodilators like cramp bark, cytokine blockers like grape leaf etc…
The key, as I said, is to have those resources on hand before (or as soon as) you get sick. Ordering the herbs online and having them show up three days later when you’re good and sick isn’t nearly as good a strategy as reaching into your cupboard and grabbing the herb the moment you need it. In an ideal world, we’d all have a cupboard full of wonderful herbs and tinctures we grew ourselves last summer but if you didn’t, I humbly offer the magic button below that can help to solve that problem. We have some wonderful herbs and kits that can help you through this winter.
One kit in particular which is handy to have is the Respiratory Prep Kit. If you go to that product page you’ll see a green link that says “Click Here For Info On How to Use This Kit”. It talks about a lot of our respiratory formulas (there are eight of them in the kit) and how and when to use them during the course of an illness. We also have a new kit Called The Bunker Buster. If you REALLY want to have everything one might need on hand. That pretty much fits the bill. There’s a video on that product page that talks about all the goodies in it.
I hope your winter is a wonderful experience. I wish you all health and happiness. We really appreciate your support of our efforts here at HomeGrown Herbalist. We’re grateful for you kindness and friendship. Have a great winter! :0)
Doc Jones
HomeGrown Herbalist School of Botanical Medicine
Our Black Friday Sale Begins TODAY!!
Loving the amazing version of Winter Wonderland !!
Dr. Jones what would you recommend for this dry hacking cough ?
I’d have a look at Respiratory – COF
https://homegrownherbalist.net/?s=cof&post_type=product&title=1&excerpt=0&content=1&categories=1&attributes=0&tags=1&sku=1&orderby=date-DESC&ixwps=1
Doc, you make us all feel better just by sharing your knowledge, talents and delightful sense of humor. Love the song! Thanks!
Great new lyrics. 🙂 🙂 🙂
I’ve been absorbing information about germ theory vs terrain theory and wonder if colds, flu, etc. are actually seasonal detox, possibly triggered by invisible messages that are exchanged between people, stress (even maybe good, exciting stress), or something else that we don’t know about or understand yet. It’s interesting to ponder how our vocabulary would need to change if, indeed, “germs” (the “catchy,” bad ones) don’t exist …. 🙂
Well, there’s no question that the germs exist. The question is why are we so much more susceptible from October to April. There are a number of factors. Certainly the cold weather doesn’t help but other things like markedly diminished Vit D (from sunshine) and markedly increased consumption of sugars and other simple carbs over the holidays can have a negative impact on immunity. There are lots of other factors as well.
Not only are you a great herbalist…you’re a good song parody-writer. Move over Weird Al! lol
Love all of the respiratory herb. I’m a member of the school and I’ve done what you taught me–stocked my apothecary well. This year, Lobelia even showed up fat and sassy in my garden! Wonderful stuff.
God bless.
We actually had a family band that performed all over the Mountain West for years. Then, when the rotten kids got REALLY good, they grew up and moved away. LOL
Some of my kids have been after me to put up a few music-y things on the YouTube Channel. Maybe someday we’ll have a minute to do something like that.
I just ordered the other day the respiratory kit. It has been so helpful. Now if I could just get my taste and smell back after a year.
Sharik Peck, the inventor of the Rezzimax Tuner has been doing some really interesting work with that.
https://homegrownherbalist.net/product/rezzimax-pain-tuner-pro/
We have found that a daily dose of ashwaganda for a while has brought back our taste and smell! We’ve decided it must be it’s nervine properties on the olfactory nerve that is often affected with {…}?
Are any a problem if on Blood pressure medication, or statins? Hubby is on these and drives a school bus so you know how germy that is!
Hi Shirley,
Shoot me an email.
https://homegrownherbalist.net/contact-us/
Hello Doc Jones,
Do you have any experience with treating ear infections in dogs?
Only on weekdays and only for about thirty years. I don’t remember treating any on weekends so there are probably folks out there with more experience. ;0)
Many/most dogs with bad ears have underlying allergy issues. If we deal with the allergies, the ear issues diminish markedly.
Shoot me an email. :0)
https://homegrownherbalist.net/contact-us/
Thank you so much for sharing this and all the other stuff too. It’s reassuring to feel more capable and equipped. I’ve one question about this post I’d love answered if you have time: how is mullein an expectorant and a suppressant? I thought they were opposites. I’m new to this.
Hi Lydia, they aren’t opposite functions. Cough suppressants decrease coughing, either by relaxing bronchial muscles directly with antispasmodic functions or indirectly by sedating the nerves governing those muscles. Expectorants help to move mucus by thinning the mucus that’s produced or by increasing the activity of the cilia which move the mucus (or both).
Now, certainly there are some advantages to coughing a bit to get mucus out of the system but that’s just an added bonus to expectorant function. But if the mucus is thinner and the cilia are beating faster, you don’t need to cough as much.
We go into a lot of this sort of thing in the school. Sounds like you’d enjoy it. :0)
https://homegrownherbalist.net/about-the-school/
I love the song.
I woke up Sunday with a sore throat and a gland in my neck the size of a chicken egg. Lucky, I had prepared in advance and had a tincture ready to press. I pressed elderberries, star anise, echinacea and yarrow blend. By the next day I was all better!!
Shaking hands is not the problem. The problem happens if you touch your nose or suck on your fingers after doing that.
Actually, touching your eyes is the biggest form of post-handshake transmission of most viruses. If we’d all just put braces on our elbows so we’d keep our hands away from our faces, we could cut disease transmission dramatically. That would have worked way better than masks.
Hi Doc,
You mention “Three of my favorites are pine needle, sweet wormwood and chaga.”
Do you take these as individual tinctures? Or have you made a blend of them in tincture, tea, powder, etc.
Oh- I was also wondering what you could recommend for recurring ear infections (in humans). The ear infections end up causing pretty severe vertigo – which would be awesome to avoid. 😉
Thanks!
I usually take all three to get good coverage of the bases. I call them the 3 Amigos: https://homegrownherbalist.net/product/docs-3-amigos/
Shoot me an email on the ear infection question and I’ll give you some pointers. :0)
https://homegrownherbalist.net/contact-us/
Wonderful Christmas Songs! We need them on a CD!
Any recommendations for Meniere’s Disease? Hopefully there’s a tincture for that. My hubby, an organic farmer, has been struggling for 5yrs. It really affects his balance (and now mood – depression). We need this farmer and father to 6 better!!!
p.s. I’m signed up to take the HGH on-line classes! Super nervous… high school flash backs!
Hi Doc! I have 2 new milking dairy goats from a breeder. They have low immune systems as one has tapeworms and staph on her udders and the other got a cough and has been on Pen G and is due at the end of March. I used Chlorine dioxide spray solution on the staph and it is gone. I just ordered D.O.C. Probiotic to put them on as they now have stuffy noses. I was wondering which tincture and how much I could get them to get rid of parasites and build their immune system and detox them from their vaccines. (The breeder vaccine them every 6 months)
Hi Jodie,
I sent you an email. :0)
Jodie I sent you an email…two actually, because I hit send somehow before I was done jabbering about goats.
Doc,
Student in your school and living all the knowledge you share. I absolutely love, ❤️, LOVE this Winter wonderland song❣️😷🤒🤧
Your sense of humor makes learning fun and the information in your head is amazing.
Thanks for sharing and doing this school.