Cinnamon Seaweed Chicken Soup - Immune Booster!

Today I have a cold. Actually, I've had a cold for the past few days and I am thoroughly sick of breathing through my mouth, sleeping (or not) with three pillows and all the aches & pains that go along with it.

Ok. Enough complaining....because, I am also aware of so much more that my body is doing right now with this glorious cold (did I just say that?!). I can actually feel my immune system revving up, like a great engine waking up after it's winter slumber. 

My lymph nodes are 'active' and my thymus gland is busy rushing T-cells around my body to root out nasties that have lingered during our hibernation. Well, not that we've been staying inside, we have really had some lovely warm weather this entire winter and I have been out in the tunnels and garden since January...but you know what I mean! 

Winterish weather though is pretty well over - the flowers are all blooming (at least they were until the goats got out into the drive way and ate all mine) the bees are flying and the leaves are coming out. It's spring and quite often that means a great head full of snot! 

In honour of all of these bugs & viruses that are making their unrelenting rounds - I've made a Cinnamon Seaweed Chicken Soup and am busy enjoying every morsel in the clinic today. It has been a very busy week but I have finally found a day where I can nourish myself and hopefully give my body what it needs to boost my immune system and be ready for this new season.

When I make chicken soup.......

I like to bake the chicken (whole) first until it nearly falls apart.....then with my pot of lovely root vegetables (today I used sweet potato, celeriac, carrot, turnip, onion, garlic) bubbling away I add  a generous amount of seaweed (dillisk), the chicken and spices. I love cumin, cinnamon, black pepper and fresh parsley from the garden at this time of year, it tastes lovely with this mixture of vegetables. 

Tiffin with Cinnamon Seaweed Chicken Soup

It's Flu Season! How's Your Motor Running?

This is the time of year when most people are being told to get flu shots, stay away from hospitals because of winter vomiting bugs, kids come down with chicken pox and nearly everyone seems to have a runny nose...

I don't know about you but - as a Medical Intuitive, Nutritionist, parent and human being living on this planet for a number of years... all of this seems to be quite normal to me. I mean, this takes place every year, we get colds, we get bugs and this should be usual, right? 

So, why all the running around and fuss being made about how to avoid a cold? Get a flu shot? Not wanting our bodies to experience anything close to a 'sick' day has gotten to be a bigger epidemic then the so called Swine flu that never was... (I got it by the way, and now I have natural antibodies).

I guess my point here would be to say, why would we go out of our way to fight the flu, prevent colds (so we won't miss work or school?), run away from bugs and what not... This is the winter season, this is the perfect time of year to take your immune system out for a test run.

What I like to tell people is this: it's as if you have a fancy car sitting in your garage, perhaps a Porsche. It sits there week after week, month after month and you never take it out for a spin. Not once in all that time. How would you know, when you are ready to use it, that all is in working order?

Your immune system is exactly like that car. You have the most amazing machine, it is a work of art - that has taken millions of years on this earth co-evolving with bacteria and viruses, to get to a state where your body can detect and respond to millions of different organisms. 

Each year you get a chance to take this incredible magical system out for a test - to ensure all is in order and to iron out any problems. Perhaps to give it a tuneup along the way... You get a cold, you might have a 24 hour bug or (shudders) you get a flu that puts you down for a week. 

This only makes perfect sense to me - how else do we test these bodily functions? Your body needs to be clean, be able to respond appropriately and know that it can heal and repair itself when any of this is necessary. 

To shut down your immune function with vaccines, medications, poor food choices, lack of exercise - and then to think  to yourself "I'm perfectly healthy, I never get a cold or flu" - is the biggest lie being told on the earth today. 

If your immune system hasn't kicked in for a while, it's time to make some serious changes to your life...

April

Corn growing in the garden...