7 All Natural H-Flu Remedies

When anyone in your family gets sick, the number one goal is to reduce the impact. With these seven natural flu remedies below, we reduced the impact of the most resilient version of the flu, the H-flu. Below I’ll tell you about the H-flu and how we got it. Skip right to the end for natural flu remedies remedies for the baby!

Why I Put Off My Dentist for 2 Years

During the year of 2017, I was pregnant. My midwife strongly suggested that I wait on any dental work, as the bacteria could enter the bloodstream. There’s some varied opinions on this and I’m not an expert.

By the end of 2018, I had still neglected to use all my dental insurance funds because I was breastfeeding. Novocaine in a breastfeeding mother’s system would pass to the baby. Therefore, I would have had to pump the milk and throw it away, known as “pump and dump.” Personally, I avoided this as much as possible because milk supply maintenance was one of the hardest things to do.

I knew I had some dental work to do, but Autumn was still breastfeeding. However, I sucked it up and went to the dentist.

How I got H-flu

My pain threshold is pretty high. I had a 22-hour unmediated labor with Autumn. When the dentist would ask if I could feel XYZ, I could feel it almost every time. So, he would give another shot full of novocaine. Then we would wait. My hands were shaking and the dentist told me this was normal. After ten shots, I lost my patience and asked for us to continue with some pain.

How I knew it was H-flu

As I walked to my car, my energy was 100% gone. It was the strangest thing. Normally if I’m sick, I get a small onslaught of exhaustion and force myself to quit everything. Once I get the rest+sleep+diet, I am good to go –> two days max.

The next few days were unbelievable. Not to mention, new neighbors moved in next door at our town-home and decided to gut the place from floor to roof through all hours of the night. When we asked them to cease at 10PM, we were told to leave their property and they continued to work well into the night.

That same weekend was Christmas with my parents and my brother’s family. They have little kids. So I went to urgent care to check for all the contagious things. No strep. No flu. Good to go? The family said yes. So we went.

One of the nights, I was like a baby (as I mentioned before, I have a high threshold for sickness and pain.) I had to take Tylenol to make it through the night. Thankfully, it helped. Unfortunately, during the holiday, my professional job had significant demands that required me to stay connected to my laptop periodically.

What is H-flu

Haemophilus influenzae, also known as “H-flu,” which is a more resilient strand of the flu that is bacterial not viral. In spite of the name, H. influenzae do not cause influenza (the flu). Doctors consider some of these infections “invasive.” Invasive disease happens when the bacteria invade parts of the body that are normally free from germs. For example, H. influenzae can invade the spinal fluid, causing meningitis, or bloodstream, causing bacteremia.

The most common types of invasive disease caused by H. influenzae are:

• Pneumonia* (lung infection)
• Bacteremia (bloodstream infection)
• Meningitis (infection of the tissue covering of the brain and spinal cord)
• Epiglotittis (swelling in the throat)

People diagnosed with H. influenzae, including Hib, disease take antibiotics, usually for 10 days, to treat the infection. Depending on how serious the infection is, people with H. influenzae infection may need care in a hospital. (Reference: https://www.cdc.gov/hi-disease/index.html)

Why I Chose Natural Remedies

I strongly believe in natural ways. During pregnancy, I held a very intentional diet/lifestyle. After my water broke, I didn’t dilate basically at all. I sustained a legitimately difficult 22-hour labor with no medicine – no Pitocin, epidural or even Tylenol.

At the time of this blog, I have been sick for a month. However, according to the CDC, H-flu may be cured after ten days on medicine. I took no medicine and was probably sick about the same time, without the repercussions of additional medicine. It was horrible for about ten days, but we didn’t even know what it was until the tenth day.

My physician’s assistant sister-in-law would disagree with parts of this blog post, but she still loves me! She would say take the antibiotic. I know this is risky when dealing with H-flu. However, my husband took the medicine because he had already seen me suffering for a week. We got healthy around the exact same time. So it cut off about a week, which may seem like a long time. But I didn’t have to ingest any chemicals at all.

6 Natural Ways Worked for me

So, I want to share what got me through and how we have managed to make it through the H-flu. In short:

1. Fresh Eucalyptus
2. Sleep
3. Eat, Drink and Smell Essential oils
4. Clean
5. Eat, even if you don’t feel like it
6. Hit the beach!
7. Acupuncture

1. Fresh eucalyptus in a hot shower

Tie it up with a rubber band. If you have a fever though, take a cold shower – sorry!

2. LOTS of sleep

But, it might be hard. So here are some suggestions:

2a. Sleep on your back with a slight incline (pillow behind your back)

2b. Brush your teeth and tongue. Sounds weird, but it helped me a lot!

2c. WORST CASE, I hate to say it but Tylenol PM. Because you need to get your body to sleep. This is how your body can repair most naturally. The H-flu was the worst at night.

3. Eat, drink, and smell essential oils

Please make sure you do your research on what essential oils you use. My preference is Young Living. If you want to sign up under me, I have lots of amazing conversations with my beautiful team. Click this link and input 1997465 to both slots. Pick your starter kit (with a diffuser! woo hoo) and enroll in the monthly order. You can always change that from month to month, but this is how you build up reward points. Don’t buy anything without this!

I love me some essential oils and had this rack custom made.

3a. Eat: make a flu bomb.

• Order vegetable capsules.
• Put the drops listed below
• Add a carrier oil! We love coconut oil or honey!

3b. Drink Essential Oils, too!

Make sure you stay hydrated in general. Hydration was a game changer between my husband and I’s recovery. Even though my throat hurt SO BAD, I continued to force water. Conversely, my husband ended up having to go to ER, sadly due to dehydration.

Get a glass bottle and add lemon, thieves or lemongrass essential oils in a glass jar or water bottle all day long. See the link to my favorite glass drinking jug.

3c. Smell

Diffuse essential oils all day every day – Thieves is amazing for an immune boost. That’s an easy one.

4. Clean freak

1. Wash your sheets daily, if you can muscle up the energy.
2. My absolute favorite baby cleaning hack is rubbing alcohol in a glass spray bottle (Thanks to my dear friend, Shaila for that one.)
3. If you can afford it, hire someone. There’s nothing I wanted to do less than clean when I was sick

5. Eat, even if you don’t feel like it

Make sure you eat food that is extremely good for you. No one knows your body like you. This was one of the toughest illnesses I’ve had because it was over the holidays – wine, chocolate and desserts everywhere! Whenever I had a choice, I went for green juices and dark berries.

6. Get Some Sun!

The vitamin D from the sun will help more than you could imagine. We were both sick when I packed us up and we hit the beach in this picture:

7. Acupuncture

Don’t freak out! I know you’ve heard about it. I had been desperate at the end of the month. Even though I was feeling quite a bit better, there was still some thing lingering. So I decided to give it a try. For one hour, I laid on my back, with pins in strategic locations from my head to my toes, literally. They were even in my ears!

I felt the fluid from my nasal cavity drain behind my head. Then, I just started to slowly move my hips a little bit and started to feel like alignment was coming back too!

Some say acupuncture has not been helpful for them, but I am certain this was the final nail in the H-flu coffin, so to speak.

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Baby Specific Sickness Remedies

1. The Frida boogie sucker – I never thought I would need it. It was super critical for the baby girl to sleep. She would wake up in the middle of the night and seemed to be scared that she couldn’t breath. We used this and she went back to sleep! Miracle worker.
2. Breastmilk, breastmilk, breastmilk! When a mother is sick, her milk still passes on the antibodies to the baby. Isn’t that incredible?
3. Wash everything. She never napped on the same set of sheets, if I could help it.
4. Rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle (again!) Clean toys and all furniture at the baby’s mouth and hand level.
5. If in desperation for baby sleep, allow cuddle naps but not too many. You might get too far away from your sleep schedule.