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A natural sinus infection solution

"Sinus Infection? Is that you sneaking up on me? Do you know who you are messing with? I think you picked the wrong person. I'm not putting up with you. Find someone else to make miserable...."

I don't know what it is about sinus infections, but they make me feel miserable. I don't put up with it since I know what will make it go away just as fast as it came: raw garlic. Garlic is the natural alternative to an antibiotic. Works like a charm.

Here's how:

• Each day, swallow 4-6 freshly minced raw garlic cloves a day, on a full stomach, with some water (rub a stainless steel spoon on your tongue and chew parsley to remove the garlic taste/odor).
  
• And the most essential component: my garlic nasal rinse.
  

I have tried a neti pot, but for some reason, I just can't get it to work for me. Then I discovered the NeilMed SinuFlo Ready Rinse bottle at my local drugstore. It works so much better than the Neti pot! Rather than just using saline for a nasal rinse, when I have an infection, the best remedy is raw garlic. I cut up 1 garlic clove and mash it up with some water, strain it, then put it in my nasal rinse bottle. I added enough water to equal about 1 1/2 to 2 ounces. Then I irrigate my sinuses with the garlic juice water. Wow! Almost instantly it has an effect and within a day or two, my congestion disappears! It should not burn your sinuses. If it does, then you can just add more water.

I typically keep taking the garlic for several days after the symptoms go away just to be sure it is gone for good.

Recipe: Ratatouille

Here is my favorite recipe for Ratatouille. It is easy and delicious!

4 Tbsp. olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbsp. fresh parsley, chopped
1 eggplant, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1/2 cup or more grated Parmesan cheese (optional)
2 zucchini, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 mild onion, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 red bell pepper, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
sea salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Heat 2 Tbsp. of olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and saute for a few minutes. Add the parsley and eggplant. Saute until the eggplant starts to soften, about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop other vegetables and place on a large baking sheet. Add eggplant to the vegetables on the baking sheet. Drizzle all the vegetables with 2 Tbsp olive oil and gently stir to coat. Sprinkle with sea salt and parmesan cheese, if desired.

Bake for 45-60 minutes.

A Natural Remedy for Infections

As the strains of bacteria and viruses continue to get more virulent, you need to know about a natural remedy to keep your body healthy. While elderberry juice is great for viruses, it does not help with bacterial infections. The absolute best thing to take for a bacterial infection is garlic.

Garlic has been valued for centuries due to it's medicinal properties. Modern research has found that it has antibacterial, anti fungal, and antiviral properties. It is a supreme infection fighter and has been found to kill bacteria on contact. Research as found that even if it is diluted 1 part in 125,000, it still killed bacteria. It is an extremely effective and powerful broad-spectrum antibiotic. It has been proven to destroy Streptococcus, Staphylococcus, Typhoid, Diphtheria, Cholera, E. coli, Tuberculosis, Tetanus, and many others. Garlic's use as an antibacterial agent in Russia has earned it the nickname, Russian penicillin.

Garlic also increases the activity of the immune system. It stimulates the multiplication of infection-fighting white cells, boosts natural killer cell activity, and increases the efficiency of antibody production. The immune-boosting properties of garlic seem to be due to its sulfur-containing compounds, such as allicin and sulfides.

Fresh, raw garlic is the best way to take it for the most potent benefits. It takes 5-6 cloves or more a day to get the full medicinal benefit. They should be freshly minced and then swallowed with water on a full stomach. You can mix it with honey to get it down easier. Another way to get it down is to put the freshly minced garlic into empty capsules and swallow them immediately. I have found that I will need to eat more food after taking the garlic to avoid nausea or stomach discomfort. Cooked garlic does not have the same medicinal benefits.

Garlic odor can be eliminated on your hands by rubbing them on stainless steel. Garlic on your breath can be helped by eating parsley. Personally, I'd rather smell a little like garlic than be sick in bed.

I have seen garlic work for chest congestion, colds, sinus infections, and tonsillitis. For the tonsillitis, I have put 4-5 raw cloves in a blender with a little bit of water and apple cider vinegar, blended it up and strained it. Gargling 2-3 times a day with the diluted garlic juice was all it took to get rid of the infection in the tonsils.

I would not use raw garlic on a young child due to it's potential irritation of the digestive tract.

Black Bean Salad

Here is one of my favorite recipes from my newest book, Vibrant Health: Simple Steps to Transform Your Health, which should be available on my website very soon!! Enjoy!

Black Bean Salad

2 cups black beans, cooked
1 cup corn, frozen or fresh
1/2 red bell pepper, finely chopped
3 green onions, finely chopped
1 large carrot, thinly sliced
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds, optional

Dressing:
2 tsp. apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup mild oil ( such as avocado, grapeseed, etc..)
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. sea salt
pinch of cayenne pepper or more to taste
1 tsp. honey or agave

In a salad bowl, combine all the vegetable ingredients. Place the dressing ingredients in a small jar and shake to combine. Pour the dressing over the salad and stir well. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary.

Serves 2

Note: Diced jicama and avocado also taste great in this salad.

The Miracle of Your Body

While many people gaze at the universe in awe of it's greatness, I am fascinated my the microscopic world inside our bodies.

Psalms 139:14 says, “We are fearfully and wonderfully made”. The human body is truly miraculous. Right now while you sit quietly, a myriad of wonderful things are taking place in your body: Your heart is beating an average of 70 times per minute….that is 93,000 times per day and 34 million times per year. The heart pumps an average of 6 quarts of blood a minute, and in one day pumps enough blood to fill more than fourty 50-gallon drums. What is so amazing is that, it fuels itself, paces itself, repairs itself, and alters itself in response to lifestyle changes with no conscious effort on your part. In addition to your heart, your liver is detoxifying your blood, your brain is storing away information, cells are being formed, and cells are being destroyed.

Did you know that there are 100 trillion cells in your body? Your body makes one million new cells each second! Originally thought to be a small blob of protoplasm, these cells have been found to be more elaborate and sophisticated than what we ever thought possible. Each cell is an amazing world unto itself. It can take in nutrients, convert these nutrients into energy, carry out specialized functions, and reproduce as necessary. What goes on inside cells illustrates overwhelming evidence of intelligent design. Cells are so complicated that we are only just beginning to understand their internal workings. Compared to our most advanced technology, a cell, comprised of billions of parts is more complex than a Boeing 747 aircraft. What goes on in the cell is so complex that it can be compared to a city! For instance, the workers are the proteins, the power plant is the mitchondria, the roads and highways are the actin fibers and microtubules, the trucks are the Kinosin and Dynein, the factories are the ribosomes, the post office is the Golgi apparatus, the recycling center is the lysosome, and the library is the nucleic acid. We now know that every major process in each cell is carried out by molecular machines that are made of proteins. These are complex machines made up of hundreds of amino acids. How does a cell know how to do all of this?

Every cell in your body has a set of instructions for carrying out it’s activities that is written on the long chain molecule called DNA. Biologists have now found that DNA are vastly more efficient at storing information than our current computer technology. If unwound and tied together, the strands of DNA in just one cell would stretch almost six feet long! The amount of information in the DNA of one cell is equal to the information in 1000 books! In the amount of DNA that would fit on the head of a pin, one could store information, which if typed out, would make pile of paper so high that it would reach from here to the moon 500 times!

Do you know that in just one square inch of your skin, there are around 4 yards of nerve fibers, 1,300 nerve cells, 3 million cells, and 3 yards of blood vessels? Your kidneys will filter poison from the blood and leave the good things alone. How does it know one from the other? During conception, how does one tiny cell divide into cells that know how to form bones and skin and organs and eyes, and hair in all the right places and come into the world at exactly the right time when it is strong enough to sustain life?

The human body is truly miraculous. Watch this amazing animation of what goes on inside your cells.

Destroy a virus with Elderberry

Not many things will destroy a virus. If you go to the doctor, they really don't have anything to give you. It's up to your immune system to handle it. That's not good news for those with weakened immune systems.

But there is a wonderful, completely natural solution: Elderberry. The berries of the elder tree have been found to actually deactivate the spikes on viruses so they can no longer enter your cells and replicate. Studies have shown elderberry to neutralize and reduce the ability of influenza viruses to infect the body. Israeli researcher, Madeleine Mumcuoglu, Ph.D. found that the elderberries seem to be designed as a specific weapon against the flu virus. Viruses form tiny spikes that enable them to penetrate the wall of a healthy cell and set up shop inside it, replicating more viruses. The active ingredient in elderberry breaks down these spikes within 24-48 hours, so the virus cannot spread. Patients in the study who took the elderberry juice syrup reported a much faster termination of symptoms than those who didn't take it. 20% were better within 24 hours, 70% by 48 hours, and 90% were well by 3 days.

The ability of viruses to alter their genetics and create new strains makes it difficult for modern medicine to come up with vaccines or anything to effectively treat them. But this doesn't stop elderberry from working...it keeps on inactivating those viruses no matter what kind they are.

And if that's not enough to get excited about, elderberry also reduces fevers, alleviates sore throats, tonsillitis, and respiratory illnesses, such as viral bronchitis. I gave a teaspoon of elderberry concentrate to my daughter, who had a fever of 101 at bedtime, and she slept great all night and woke up without the fever.

To summarize elderberry's benefits:

• Anti-viral
• Colds and Flu
• Tonsillitis and Laryngitis
• Bronchitis
• Sore Throats
• Fevers
  
• Upper respiratory infections
• Anti-inflammatory
• Immune support
  

Now that's a cool herb!! So, before you run right out to the health food store for some elderberry, you need to know the best kind to buy. Herbs vary tremendously in quality. Most of the cheaper supplements are cheap because the companies buy their herbs from the most inexpensive places possible. They buy herbs at pennies per pound from India, Mexico, China, and other countries. The quality is never checked, pesticides could be used, and when they are imported to the US, they are sterilized with chemicals, such as ethylene oxide. So, you could be getting toxic chemicals on your herbs. And usually, these herbs are old and have lost their potency in the drying and encapsulating process. Capsules of elderberry are just about worthless. The best form is a liquid concentrate of the elderberry juice. It is more potent, more available to the body, and even tastes good. Take 2-3 teaspoons three times a day for maximum effectiveness for an adult. You can take it all winter long for protection from the flu (along with your cod liver oil) as well as taking it when you get sick. This is one herb I don't want to be without!!