Getting a cold or flu are not some of most pleasant experiences to have to deal with.  Especially during this time of year, ads are all over the place about how their product can eliminate your running nose, congestion, coughing or sore throat.  What these same ads don’t tell you is that these products don’t always work that well and contain tons of ingredients our bodies don’t need to help reduce the symptoms and recover quickly.  That’s why I recommend trying some natural cold and flu remedies to help bring you relief the natural way.

Neti Pot

We always associate someone blowing their nose or sniffling as a sign that a person is sick.  It’s also extremely annoying to have nasal congestion or a running nose.  One of the easiest and most effective way to help clear our your nasal passage ways is to use a neti pot.  All it requires is a pour a salt water mixture through each nostril.  Not only have I found it effective all year round, but especially when trying to fight a cold or flu.  I have noticed a drastic reduction in the amount of colds and time in which a cold remains.  The key is that a neti pot keeps your sinuses clear and helps provide better drainage.  This can really really help prevent and reduce the severity of a sore throat.  I recommend using the neti pot at least once a day on a regular basis to prevent colds and at least twice if you do actually have a cold.

Photo by prakhar.

Herbs

There are many popular herbs available that can help prevent, fight off and reduce the symptoms of a cold.  Let’s go through some of my favorites.

Echinacea

One of the best herbal remedies I have found to help prevent and fight off colds is echinacea.  It works by helping your body produce more white blood cells to better fight off infections.  The best time to take echinacea is when you first begin to see the signs.  I recommend buying echinacea from your local natural goods store and sticking with organic.

Thyme

I just recently found out that Thyme is an extremely effective herb in helping fight off both chest and nasal congestion.

If you grind up dry thyme and inhale the powder through your nose,  it can help relieve your nasal congestion.  It feels a little weird to inhale this mixture, but it really does work.

In order to relieve congestion, boil thyme, preferably fresh, for 4-5 minutes.  Drinking this mixture can really help reduce coughs and help relieve congestion in your chest.

Ginger

Ginger is not necessarily a herb, but extremely effective at providing relief for colds.  One of my favorite things is to drink a ginger tea that my finacee makes.  All you do to make it is boil a few pieces of ginger for 10-15 minutes or once you begin to really get a strong ginger smell.  For a little sweetness, add a little brown sugar and boil for a few more minutes.  Take out the ginger pieces and drink while still hot.  This tea provides great relief, especially for congestion.

Box Teas

It’s great to make you own tea as it can be much more inexpensive, but you can always buy a quality natural/organic tea to help fight off a cold.   There are great cold teas that have some of the herbs above and more to really help fight off colds.

Water Vapor

Did you ever wonder why when you go into a hot shower while sick that you feel so much better.  The water vapor really helps clear up nasal and chest congestion.  A shower is not the only way to get this same relief.  You can instead try boiling some water and breathe in the vapors to get the same effect.

Keep Warm

One of the most often overlooked ways to easily fight off a cold is to keep warm.  This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to crank up your heat.  Just keep yourself warmly clothed in several thin layers and in bed as long as you can.  The easier it will be for your body to fight off that cold the warmer you stay, especially at night.

Stay Rested

With our busy lives, it can be hard to stay in bed and get plenty of rest.  Sleep is often one of the most neglected things in our lives.  Not getting enough sleep may only extend the length of a cold or flu.

Hopefully by following the above methods not only when you get a cold/flu, but on a regular basis, you can prevent getting sick this winter.  Please share any natural remedies you have.

I want to first thank Natura for providing this great latex pillow and to all of my readers who participated in this contest. The winner of the contest is Beth and she wanted the pillow because:

I hate my current, conventional pillow…no support! Would love to try the Ultimate Pillow!

If you didn’t already get to, be sure to check out Naturaworld.com for all their great all natural bedding products including mattresses, pillows and more.  Also, be sure to also sign up for my RSS Feed or email subscription to get all of my latest posts and upcoming contests I will be holding.  Thanks again to everybody and congratulations to Beth.

Seventh Generation is taking action with their Million Baby Crawl to ensure that toxic chemicals found in many of our household products are better regulated.

There current Toxic Substances Control Act that should be protecting us from harmful chemicals, is outdated and not effective like it should be.  Since the 1970’s, the EPA has only required safety testing on 200 of the over 80,000 chemicals found in common household products many of us use.

The new Kid Safe Chemical can help strengthen this previous legislation and make sure that all chemicals found within products we use are safe.  This means safe for everybody, including our children and pregnant women.

Dr. Greene, notable pediatrician and author of several popular green health books for children, speaks about legislation and what we can do to keep our families safe:

Who knows the effect that many of these chemicals are doing to our families and in particular our children.  That’s why it’s great that Seventh Generation is taking action to make sure that this bill gets passed to protect our children from all of these chemicals.

So what can you do to make sure this bill gets passed?

You can join Seventh Generation in their Million Baby Crawl to make sure this bill does in fact get passed.  This doesn’t mean you have to march down to Washington DC either.  Their site provides a way you can contact your local representative so that they know the importance of passing this legislation.  There are also events being held in several major cities throughout America to get the word out.

There are also things that you can do to make sure that you are not exposing dangerous chemicals to your family just as Dr. Greene said.  We can begin using safe products in our households including products from Seventh Generation and EcoMist or try making homemade cleaners.  By simply using more natural products, especially cleaning products, we can reduce our families’ exposure harmful chemicals.

Good Luck to Seventh Generation and hopefully the Million Baby Crawl is successful in making our households safer.

The World Wide Congress (WWC) began it’s 9th session this past Monday, November 6th and will be held until this Friday, November 13th. Wild9 will feature topic of this event will be the impact that climate change has on the environment and the quality of life of us as humans.

History Of World Wide Congress

A partnership between The WILD Foundation and Unidos para la Conservación formedthe World Wide Congress over 30 years ago.  The WWC has became one of the longest running environmental forums, taking on various important environmental issues.  Participants come from every sector, including the government, private sector and academia.

Wild 9 Highlights

One of the major highlights of the congress already is the announcement of an International Cooperation between the Mexico, the US and Canada.  Mexico President Calderon made this announcement at the opening of congress, which was already signed by all three countries.  President Calderon said:

Today it gives me great pleasure to announce that, within the framework of this 9th World Wilderness Congress, Mexico, Canada and the United States will be formalizing an important Cooperation Plan for Wilderness Conservation.  This Agreement will make it easier to exchange successful experiences, and facilitate monitoring and the training of human resources, as well as financing projects that will protect and recover wilderness areas.

Be sure to check out the live stream of the event as well as the latest blog articles and tweets.

It’s extremely tough to compare green products, especially with so many green marketing claims being made that are hard to verify.  Eco-rate is a service that allows you to examine products based on their comprehensive eco-rating.   The feature that really caught my eye about this site is that  it allows you to compare the cost of a product to it’s environmentally friendliness.

Eco-Ratings

So exactly what is their eco-rating and how can it be used to help you buy products?  When you put in a search or browse for products on their site, each contains 5 separate factors into determining the eco-rating.  Let’s take a look at each:

• Environmental Impact: The overall environmental rating the product has based on factors of how the product was produced, where it was created and how green is the manufacturer.
• Consumption: The total energy consumption of the product.
• Toxicity: If the product contains toxic materials and how dangerous they are on the environment.
• LifeCycle Cost: The total cost of ownership including energy cost.
• Price Rating: How the price of this product compares to others in its category.

As you can see, the rating takes into account both environment and cost factors.  It’s pretty obvious to see why I would like this tool.  What’s also neat about this site is that it allows users to input their zip code to get information about local and national rebates for the product.  You can also see local recycling facilities where you can recycle the product or the one you are replacing at the end of it’s life.

Products

Eco-rate has a range of products from lighting to electronics.  On their main page, they have a cool tool where you can explore a simulated home to help you find products that you may need around the home.  They also provide a searching capability to make it easy to find just about any green product you are looking for.   If you are confused about any of the terminology their site uses for products, they have a dictionary of green terms.

Eco-rate is definitely worth checking out, especially when trying to determine which products have the best combination of price and eco-friendliness.  I also recommend a visual green search engine I talked about sometime ago called JumpGuage as well as various other great Green Search Engines.

Nominations are being accepted until November 16th, 2009 for Green Web Awards which is run by Nigel’s Eco Store.  If you enjoy reading my blog, I would appreciate nominations for these awards. Thank you for reading and hopefully Pays to Live Green will receive a Green Web Award this year

The J. Walter Thompson (JWT) advertising agency recently ddid a study in which it found that many of the “green” terms used  in marketing can often confuse consumers.  Some of the major offenders include environment, going green and sustainability.

From the findings of this study, JWT urges marketers to “Drop the buzzwords” to vanques consumer confusion.  It seems that the biggest problem with that more clarification is needed when using many of these terms for their products.

I recently wrote about how their are too many green labels on the market, well “green” terminology is the same way.  They are too many buzzwords thrown out there that are used solely to sell more products.  Consumers are often left in the dark as to why the particular product may be “green”.

It’s so tempting to buy a product when flashy green words are displayed.  I’ve gotten caught in the trap as well.  One of the keys to ensuring that we as consumers are not deceived is to make sure we take it upon ourselves to properly research the product before we buy.  Marketers also need to do their share by properly defining all the terms they are using and not abuse their use.  All green buzzwords are not bad, as long as they factual.