Hi everyone,

I’m running a little late this month because I have spent the last 3 weeks sicker than I have been for at least 15 years. From all of those who I have talked to, this is the short end of the nasty flu strain that is going around this year. I have talked to others who were out for 6 weeks with the same symptoms. Now because I rarely get sick, I am not a patient patient. There is never an illness in my home that we can’t get over in 2-3 days, and we just hardly never get sick bugs at my house. But I have had 3 weeks to think about all that I have done “wrong” to “earn” my 3 weeks of torture. I thought I’d share to help you be more successful in fighting the nasty bugs that are circulating right now and hopefully keep you off your bed this month.

1. Get plenty of rest when you feel something coming on. I however was headed for the airport for 4 days of Disneyland when I knew something was coming, and you can imagine, there wasn’t a lot of rest involved. Then I of course hit the ground running when we got home, because every mom knows how much work there is to do when returning from vacation.

2. Eat all natural whole foods and avoid processed, dead foods when you’re sick. Focus on fruits and vegetables. Once again, when on vacation, living in a hotel room, I didn’t have access to hardly any fruits or vegetables, and interestingly enough they’re hard to find while eating inside Disneyland. I always tried to eat salads when i could, but restaurant salads are far from the healthy organic, home made salads I would eat at home.

3. Drink plenty of good water. Well, at about $3 for a small bottle of water, I tried to drink often but it’s hard to keep plunking that much down for the amounts I knew I should have been drinking, I tried to opt for filling my bottles with water from the drinking fountains, but I just really struggle with drinking tap water too so that was just as hard.

4. Catch the nasty bugs early before they have time to get a strong hold. At the very first sign of illness, start pumping the echinacea and vitamin C every hour on the hour. I gave this a very good try, constantly between rides, but I wasn’t able to take what I wanted because I was on vacation and unfortunately didn’t bring my whole herbal arsenal with me. My favorite product in the whole world that just nips any illness right in the bud is called VSC and we take it often at any first sniffles or runny noses and that is why no illness ever lasts more than a day or two at my house. I highly recommend having a stash on hand at all times. For kids, I use a liquid version. I unfortunately didn’t bring enough on vacation, and you can’t buy it in stores so I was up a creek without a paddle…

5. Use a netti pot and gargle with salt water and a drop of tea tree. I didn’t bring my netti pot along, and while I did gargle with echinacea, using real salt water is one of the most useful ways to fight a early bug. you can read more about the benefits of gargling here.

So there you have it, the “Shari Lyon, why I got so sick” confessional. It makes me crazy that I wasn’t able to be over this in just a couple of days, but as you can see, I really deserved to suffer longer than that because I broke everyone of the basic rules of getting better faster!

So, here’s to your health and I hope none of you will have to fight the nasty bugs running around out there this month!