Food is medicine, the Chinese believe. If you get one of these Chinese home remedies into your body quickly enough during the early stages of flu and rest, your body will push the cold and flu out, says Chris Devala, a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner in Dublin and Sligo.
"The critical thing most flu sufferers don't do is rest. If you are feverish and sweating, you must stay indoors with your pores covered. In Chinese medicine, the pores are regulated by the defensive energy, which is controlled by the lung energy. It's through this mechanism that the body is protected from external pathogens (colds and flus).
"The theory is that through the regulation of the pores, you can either fend off illness or expel it." Devala's Chinese homeremedies come from Michael McIntyre, director of the School of Chinese Herbal Medicine in the UK. These remedies are for the initial stages, when you get your aches and pains, to lessen the impact of the virus by helping the body to push it out of the system. Most of them do this by making you sweat, so staying warm and in bed is a crucial part of the treatment. If you're sick, the last thing you feel like doing is hunting down a natural food store, so fortunately these remedies are made from ingredients you can buy in the ordinary supermarket and keep on hand.
Michael McIntyre's Cold Remedy
Fresh ginger, four to five slices, peeled
One teaspoon coriander seeds
Two cinnamon sticks, broken Whiskey
Lemon juice
Cover the spices and simmer in one pint of water for about 10 minutes, then strain off. Add a shot of whiskey and/or lemon juice. Drink it hot.
Four Thieves Vinegar for Coughs, Colds and Infections
(The name is said to come from the Middle Ages, when during the Black Death, four thieves who worked burying bodies were not themselves infected. They later claimed it was because they drank this concoction of their own making.)
One teaspoon each of powdered clove, nutmeg and cinnamon
Two teaspoons of rosemary, peppermint, sage (fresh if possible)
Two crushed garlic cloves
One litre cider vinegar
Mix all the ingredients and leave to stand for three to four days. (If you already have flu, it's too late to do this. Otherwise, make the vinegar up now and keep it in the fridge. If you are lucky enough to not get the flu, you can always use it in salad dressings and cooking.)
Spring chicken
This is very good for the recovery period.
One chicken
Fresh ginger
3 or 4 garlic cloves
1 onion
Vegetables of choice (optional)
Put one chicken (free range if possible) in a pot and cover it with water. Add one big lump of peeled fresh ginger. Add three or four garlic cloves and one onion. Simmer until the leg bone pulls right out of the flesh. Add other vegetables if you wish. Season as you wish. Eat chicken, eat garlic, drink broth - with a bowl of rice.
Cough Mixture of Onion and Honey
1 onion
Runny honey
Finely chop the onion and put it in a bowl. Pour runny honey over to cover. Put a lid or plate over top and let sit overnight. In the morning, strain off the liquid and put it in a jar and keep it in the fridge. For children, give two to three teaspoons a day; for adults, two to three dessertspoons a day.
Mustard Foot Bath
Put one or two tablespoons of powdered mustard into a footbath of hot water and stick your feet into it. It's very important to keep your body and head covered. Just sit there until you start sweating. Once you have sweated, it is crucial to stay indoors and go to bed.
Bran Poultice for Sore Throats
Throw a few handfuls of bran into a pint of boiling water. Add a drop of tea-tree oil. Strain off and put it on a piece of gauze. Roll gauze up like a big, fat sausage and hold together with two elastic bands, one on each side.
Test it with your elbow to make sure it's not too hot, before applying externally to throat. Cover with a cloth to keep around throat until it cools off. Reheat by steaming in a colander to use again.
Garlic Flu Preventive
According to Chinese medicine, garlic strengthens the lungs, clears phlegm and builds up the defensive energy. Each night before you go to bed, take a piece of garlic the size of your baby fingernail, smash it and put it on a teaspoon with a dab of honey to cover, then swallow it.
Garlic Soup
Finely chop one onion and four or five cloves of garlic. Get a tin of consomme or stock cube (beef, chicken or vegetable). Saute the chopped onion, then add the chopped garlic and saute until done. Add soup stock and simmer for a few minutes. Throw in shot of sherry and eat it all.