Treating colds (inhalations, warming, rinsing)

11/27/2003 08:56 (Updated: 04/21/2020 20:17)

Health » Health and prevention » Diet

During the cold season, no matter how hard we try, most of us cannot avoid catching a cold. And although there are patented modern remedies against viruses and bacteria, each family has its own recipe for how to get rid of the disease as quickly as possible. Our readers share their experiences.

Spiced tea for cough and fever

“If I have a cold, tea with spices helps me a lot to reduce the troubles of the acute period of illness and brighten up my stay at home. To prepare it, put one teaspoon in a liter thermos:

• chamomile
• sage
• mint
• Bay leaf
• valerian root
• one or two cloves
• a pinch of ground ginger
• coriander
• a little ground black pepper
• a teaspoon of honey

and pour boiling water over everything. In an hour the tea is ready. Strain it through a strainer and drink it in small sips throughout the day, making sure it is moderately hot. This drink:

• relieves fever and fever
• reduces cough
• calms down
• and helps you recover faster.

Anna Illarionovna Starkova, Perm

Salt water against runny nose

“When I feel the first signs of a runny nose - a sore nose, a slight excess of liquid mucus - I immediately rinse with salt water. To do this, I fill the teapot with lukewarm, almost cool boiled water, and dissolve a teaspoon of table salt in it.

Having tilted my head over the sink so that one nostril “looks” up, I slowly pour salt water into it through the spout. Gradually, water begins to flow out of the other nostril. So I empty half the teapot.

Then, turning my head in the other direction, I repeat the same with the other nostril. If you do this procedure on time, repeating it a couple of times daily, you will be able to completely get rid of your runny nose in a day or two.” Elena Zamyatnova, Kirovograd

Conspiracies

May believers and those who may be offended by the mention of such a treatment method forgive me, but since it is also included in the methods of traditional medicine, it must be mentioned.

So, what can the world of high matters advise?

• The patient should blow his nose into a red handkerchief. This scarf must be nailed to a tree, while the spell is read: “It is not the scarf that I nail, but the disease that I lock away. We will forget about her forever and will be healthy today. Amen!".
• Holding your crossed index fingers near your nose, you need to read three times: “The cat breathes, the bird breathes, and the ant inhales the air. Breathe like that, my dear friend.”
• Put on your old clothes and go outside. You need to find and hug the willow, whispering: “The tree will accept my adversities, but they will leave me. In the name of all saints"
• It is necessary to brew half a teaspoon of birch leaves, leave for half an hour, reading a spell over the infusion: “Let this decoction help overcome a stuffy nose.”
• Rub the fir cone with a piece of soap, while reading the spell: “I wash away all the illness and impurities - everything that prevents me from breathing. And tomorrow I’ll wake up brand new and get back to work. In the name of the holy spirit, amen!” After this, you need to bury the cone under the windows.

All the information published above is in no way recommendations for use, but only a set of traditional medicine methods. Share your recipes for fighting colds in the comments.

Inhalations for cough

“My grandmother once taught me how to make inhalations for a cough, and since then I have been using this recipe for myself and my children.

Pour the boiling decoction of medicinal herbs into a small bowl. It is better to do this in the bathroom, where the air is pre-warmed by a heater or a stream of hot water from the tap. Then undress to the waist and cover yourself over the basin with a large terry towel. Breathe fragrant hot air for ten to fifteen minutes.

At the same time as your respiratory tract, this air heats:

• breast
• neck
• face.

Herbal tea with raspberries and honey will save you from the first symptoms of a cold

So the heating comes from both sides. Then quickly rinse yourself with a warm shower (you can go up to your waist), put on clean, dry underwear, wrap yourself warmly - and go to bed. It would be nice if they served you a cup of hot herbal tea with honey. Or prepare the tea in advance in a thermos and place it by your bed so you don’t have to walk around the house after inhalation. After that, all that remains is to fall asleep. And in the morning you will feel much better.” Lyudmila Gnezdinskaya, Tallinn

Water treatments

Baths with medicinal plants are an excellent remedy against colds. Naturally, we should not forget that if you have a high temperature and feel unwell, you should not take a bath. The water temperature should not exceed 37 degrees, and the intake time should not exceed 15 minutes.

Basic options for therapeutic baths

• 400 grams of chamomile flowers are brewed in 12 liters of boiling water for an hour, after which the liquid is poured through a sieve into warm bath water. In addition to chamomile, many other plants are used: pine shoots and needles, yarrow, oregano, wormwood, sage, valerian, mint, oak and/or birch leaves. You can use either one ingredient or a mixture.
• Mix 400 grams of mustard powder with warm water. Stir until the typical smell appears and the mixture should look like porridge. Then pour the resulting substance into a bath of warm water. The reception time should be limited to 5 minutes, then rinse with clean water. It is advisable to do this before bedtime.
• Chop 5-6 heads of garlic and mix with 12 liters of boiling water. This mixture should infuse for 8 hours, after which the resulting infusion is again heated to 50–60 degrees and poured into warm bath water. It is better not to do this procedure at night, as a garlic bath has a stimulating effect and it will be difficult to fall asleep after it.

Onions and garlic against flu and colds

“A very simple and effective recipe helps to avoid colds and flu, even if an epidemic is raging around. Every day, when you come home in the evening, do the following procedure. Rinse a clean teapot with boiling water and place finely chopped:

• garlic
• or onion.

Close the lid and breathe in the fumes through the kettle spout. You can also slightly warm up the kettle, for example, in a microwave oven or by placing it on low heat on the stove for a second. This little trick will help “deal with” pathogens in the respiratory tract and avoid infection.” Andrey Sokolov, Moscow

Sea pebbles will save you from a lingering cough

“To overcome a lingering cough, my grandfather always advised this remedy: put your back to the heated stove and sit like that for half an hour, or even an hour. The next morning he got up practically healthy. I follow his example when I manage to get out to the dacha, where we have a stove.

And if a cold catches me at home, then I do this: I heat pebbles brought from the sea in the oven, wrap them in a thick napkin and apply them below the collarbones, where we have the trachea and bronchi. When the pebbles have cooled, I heat them up again.

After warming up a few times, I wrap myself up and go to bed. By morning the cough goes away or becomes less.” Augusta Polikarpova, Vologda

Beetroot and soda for sore throat

“Diluted beet juice helps my children with a runny nose. To prepare it, I grate small fresh beets on a fine grater, squeeze the juice out of it and dilute it halfway with boiled water. I put it in my nose several times a day.” Diana Vazhinova, Astrakhan

Inhalations with onion or garlic help with cough

“If I have a sore throat and feel like a cold is coming on, then I start doing this procedure several times a day.

First, I gargle with warm water, in which a teaspoon of table salt and a spoonful of tea soda are diluted, plus a few drops of iodine. Then I take a tablespoon of vegetable oil, preferably olive oil, and rinse my mouth with it so long and intensely that foam forms between my teeth.

When the oil becomes completely liquid, like water, you can finish rinsing. After this procedure, any sore throat is alleviated, and recovery occurs much faster.” Vasilisa Cherkasova, Kerch

“Drinking this helps a lot when you have a cough. Boil in 0.5 liters of milk:

• medium sized onion
• and add a spoonful of honey.

This mixture should be consumed at night. The milk is very tasty, does not smell of onions at all, and even children drink it easily. The dry cough after it becomes softer and goes away faster.” Galina Naletova, Saratov

How to cure a runny nose and cough without medications

At the same time, we completely forget that our grandmothers, great-grandmothers and great-great-grandmothers also caught colds in those days when there were no traces of tablets, drops or new-fangled sprays. And nothing, somehow they were treated and, thank God, they recovered - otherwise you and I wouldn’t exist... So, maybe we should also look into our grandmother’s old “pharmacy” for lost health recipes?

When a cold begins, it is useful to rub the palms of your hands and soles of your feet with garlic, put on woolen socks and go to bed, keeping your hands under the covers all night.

It is also recommended to rub your hands with apple cider vinegar at night, after soaking them in hot water for 10 minutes.

You can rub your feet with castor oil at night and wear wool socks. To enhance the therapeutic effect, add turpentine (1 tablespoon) to heated castor oil (2 tablespoons) and rub the chest with this mixture before going to bed.

This original and, at first glance, rather funny advice will help you quickly get rid of unpleasant sensations in your throat: try... singing. At first it will be unusual and difficult, but after a while you will sing so much that you will forget about the pain. After several chants, the symptoms of the disease will completely disappear.

At the first signs of a cold, you should drink two cups of hot tea with raspberries, linden blossom and lemon or hot milk with honey and a small amount of soda, apply a pepper patch to your heels or put on socks with dry mustard, go to bed, cover yourself with a warm blanket and try to sleep . After a good night's sleep and profuse sweating, you'll feel much better by morning. Otherwise, the next day you need to move on to more intensive methods of treatment.

Burying

If you have a runny nose, do not rush to buy galazolin, naphthyzin, or sanorin at the pharmacy. It is much more effective to bury your nose with warm olive, peach, rosehip, sea buckthorn, menthol or sunflower oil, as well as an oil solution of vitamin A.

Every home probably has several heads of garlic. You can make garlic drops from it. To do this, you need to peel 3 cloves of garlic, chop them, pour 50 ml of boiling water, leave for 2 hours and drop them into your nose several times a day.

Onion juice is also suitable for this purpose. It can be obtained by grating the head of an onion on a fine grater and squeezing the onion pulp through cheesecloth. For 1 tbsp. A spoonful of water will only require one drop of onion juice. This mixture should be dropped into the nose every hour.

If you have honey, prepare honey drops. Dilute honey (preferably linden) with warm water in a ratio of 1:2 and instill 5-8 drops into each nostril 3-4 times a day.

Rinse

If you experience a sore throat or sore throat, start gargling as soon as possible with herbal decoctions, especially sage and chamomile. These herbs are practically irreplaceable for their anti-inflammatory and softening effect on the nasopharyngeal mucosa. Tricolor violet has a similar effect. Herbal decoctions for gargling are prepared at the rate of 1 tbsp. spoon of herb per 1 glass of water. The herb is brewed with boiling water, infused for 15-20 minutes, and the solution for treating the throat is ready. During the day you need to gargle at least 4-5 times.

You can dilute 3 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar and 2 teaspoons of honey in a glass of water at room temperature. Gargle with this solution 3 times a day. Before each rinse, prepare a fresh solution.

Black radish juice is good for the throat. A glass of juice should be diluted with half a glass of water and gargle as often as possible. For severe coughs, it is recommended to take freshly squeezed black radish juice orally. This is an excellent anti-inflammatory and expectorant. To prepare it, you need to mix 1 part of black radish juice with 2 parts of honey and take 1 tbsp. spoon 3-4 times a day. You can do without honey. Cut 6-8 black radish tubers into thin slices, sprinkle each slice thickly with sugar, and leave in the pan, covering it with a lid. After 10-12 hours, sweet juice is formed. Take it 1 tbsp. spoon every hour.

A very simple recipe is to drink warmed beer at night. It’s not very tasty, but it’s useful: it heals the throat, softens coughs, eliminates sore throat and restores a hoarse voice.

When a sore throat begins, slowly chewing raw lemon, especially the zest, or gargling with lemon juice helps. After this, it is advisable not to eat anything for an hour. Repeat the procedure every 3 hours.

Inhalations

Typically, steam inhalations are done for respiratory diseases 2 times a day - morning and evening. The duration of any inhalation should not exceed 15 minutes, since longer procedures can increase dryness in the throat and cause irritation of the already inflamed mucous membrane of the nasopharynx. People suffering from hypertension should be treated with special caution when using inhalations.

Inhalations are carried out no earlier than half an hour after meals and physical work. During inhalation, you should not be distracted - read, talk. If the nasopharynx is predominantly affected, it is preferable to inhale through the nose, and exhale through the nose and mouth. If the bronchi are predominantly affected, inhale through the mouth and exhale through the mouth and nose. In any case, after inhaling, you need to hold your breath for a few seconds, and then exhale slowly. Breathing should be infrequent, of medium depth, so as not to cause coughing.

To carry out inhalations at home, you need to have a saucepan or kettle (sometimes a tin can) specially designed for this purpose, a red brick, a large thick towel with which you will cover yourself when inhaling the vapors, and the main active ingredient, which, when brewed, will exude healing properties. couples.

Another auxiliary device is a funnel made of thick paper, through which, in fact, the vapors will be inhaled. The funnel is either inserted with its narrow end into the spout of the kettle, or its wide end is used to cover a pan or jar (the diameter of the wide end of the funnel should be slightly larger than the diameter of the pan or jar neck).

Most often they breathe over potatoes. But there are many other much more effective inhalation formulations.

Here are some of them:

add 5-10 drops of iodine tincture or 1 teaspoon of onion juice to a kettle with boiling 4-5 glasses of water;

put 3 tbsp in the pan. spoons of pine buds, pour 0.5 liters of boiling water, heat for 3-5 minutes over low heat, remove the broth from the heat and place the pan on a hot brick;

Place very heated stones on the bottom of the pan and sprinkle them every 2-3 minutes with a decoction of St. John's wort or oak bark;

half a hot brick is placed in a pan, finely chopped garlic is poured onto it, which soon begins to smoke;

add 2-5 drops of eucalyptus, menthol (1-2% solution) or fir oil to a kettle with 250 ml of boiling water;

pour 250 ml of boiling water into a can and add a small amount of Vietnamese Golden Star balm.

Garlic inhalations are used to quickly eliminate cold symptoms. To do this, grate 3-8 cloves of garlic on a fine grater and quickly, so that the phytoncides contained in it do not evaporate, apply this pulp to a bandage measuring 10x40 cm. The bandage is immediately placed on the bottom of an empty teapot and covered with a lid. Place the spout of the teapot in your mouth, pinch your nostrils with your fingers and slowly inhale the garlic aroma for 8-10 minutes. Exhale through the nose so that the exhaled air does not enter the kettle. If you are persistent and do 5-6 such inhalations a day, not only the incipient runny nose and cough will recede, but also much more serious diseases - sore throat, bronchitis and even pneumonia.

Rubbing

They are used to artificially warm the skin, for which they smear it with some medicinal product and rub it evenly into the skin with their hands. After rubbing, the lubricated areas of the skin are wrapped in a warm scarf or scarf. Most often, vodka or alcohol is used for rubbing. But other means can also be used.

For example:

onion pulp is mixed in half with goose fat and rubbed on the chest for a strong cough;

2 tbsp. tablespoons of sunflower oil are mixed with 0.3 teaspoons of ground red or black pepper;

add 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 tbsp to 0.5 cups of radish juice. a spoonful of honey;

mix alcohol and castor oil in a ratio of 1:2;

melted pork fat is mixed with turpentine and the chest is rubbed dry with this mixture.

Sometimes, instead of rubbing, they draw a grid on the skin with iodine. To do this, dip a thin wooden stick in iodine tincture and draw parallel strips along the chest at a distance of 5-10 mm from each other: first horizontal and then vertical. The iodine mesh is also applied to washed and dried feet from the soles to the ankles. Usually this procedure is done at night.

In the initial stage of a cold, a mixture of essential oils should help: eucalyptus (11 drops), ravansara oil (11 drops) and cinnamon leaf oil (2 drops). This mixture is combined with 30 g of vegetable or almond oil, mixed well, then applied to the throat and upper chest and rubbed.

Put on old pajamas that you are not afraid of getting dirty, and repeat the treatment several times a day. Rub yourself one last time before going to bed. In the morning you will feel that the cold has subsided.

Compresses

The compress is used to quickly resolve local inflammatory processes. It is applied to the sore spot - throat, ear, chest, back, back of the head, soles, calves of the feet.

The compress should consist of 4 layers. The first layer is a piece of fabric folded into 2-3 layers and soaked in water at room temperature or vodka: it is wrung out strongly and applied to the body. The second layer is oilcloth, wax paper or cellophane. The third layer is cotton wool. The fourth layer is a cloth or bandage with which the wrap is made, and thus the compress is tightly, but not tightly (so as not to compress the blood vessels) fixed on the body. You can also tie a woolen scarf or scarf over this structure.

The size of the first layer should be slightly larger than the area of ​​the body to which the compress is applied. The size of each subsequent layer is 2-3 cm larger than the previous one. The duration of the compress is from 1 to 12 hours, depending on the age of the patient, the severity of the disease and the type of compress.

Traditional medicine has a rich selection of remedies that can be used to treat colds at home.

The fabric is soaked in sunflower oil and kept on the body for 4 hours.

At night, make a compress by mixing 50 ml of vinegar, 20 ml of camphor oil and 30 ml of vegetable oil.

Red pepper powder mixed with a slightly squeezed gruel of grated potatoes is applied to the neck, chest, calves, soles or behind the ears.

Horseradish gruel is placed in a thin layer on a cloth and applied to the back of the neck for 30 minutes for fever.

Crushed potatoes, boiled in their skins, are mixed with honey, vegetable oil, alcohol, mustard and applied to the back in the form of cakes.

The pumpkin pulp is grated on a coarse grater, mixed with warm milk and rye flour and applied in the form of cakes to the back, chest, and neck.

The throat is wrapped in fresh cabbage leaves and tied with a warm scarf on top. Leaves are changed every 2 hours. To enhance the healing effect, a fresh cabbage leaf can be ironed with a hot iron or steamed in hot milk and applied as a compress to the throat.

A mixture of honey, alcohol and sunflower oil (all in a tablespoon) is spread on paper and applied to the sore spot, a layer of mustard is spread on top of the paper and covered first with cellophane, then with cotton wool.

At high temperatures, grate 2 raw potatoes with skins on a coarse grater, add 1 tbsp. spoon of vinegar, wrap the resulting mass in a clean cloth or gauze and apply to your forehead - the heat will subside within an hour.

Baths

Baths with medicinal plants give noticeable results for colds, but we must remember that if you have a high temperature and feel unwell, you should not take a bath. The water temperature should be between 35-37 degrees, and the duration of the bath should not exceed 15 minutes. It is best to take baths at night or an hour before meals.

To prepare medicinal baths, it is recommended to add plants such as chamomile (flowers), pine (needles and shoots), oak, birch leaves, mint, oregano, wormwood, sage, valerian, and yarrow to the water. In this case, 300-400 g of raw material is poured into a bucket of boiling water, infused for an hour, filtered and poured into the bath. You can use 1-2 plants, but decoctions of 4-5 plants give a stronger healing effect.

Mustard baths promote rapid recovery from colds. They are prepared like this: dilute 250-400 g of mustard powder in warm water to the consistency of sour cream and grind until a pungent mustard smell appears. Pour the resulting slurry into the bath and shake it well in the water. The duration of such a bath is 5-6 minutes. After the bath, you should quickly wash yourself in the shower and go to bed, wrapped in a warm blanket.

Garlic baths are very useful. You need to crush 30 cloves of garlic, pour 10 liters of boiling water over them and leave to steep for 6-8 hours. Heat the resulting infusion again, without bringing it to a boil, pour it into the bath and add plain hot water to the required volume.

If you want to take a full garlic bath, then the ratio of garlic broth and water should be 1:6. If sitting, then 1:3. If you need to steam only legs or arms, then 1:7. Just keep in mind that hot and warm garlic baths have a stimulating effect, so be careful not to overdo it with the time you take them. It is better not to do this procedure at night.

Wraps

Hot chest wraps are performed for colds accompanied by cough, but only at low body temperature. This procedure is performed as follows. A bare-chested patient sits up in bed. Behind him lies a folded flannelette blanket, over which a sheet folded in four is thrown.

The one who performs the wrap, wearing thick rubber gloves on his hands, immerses a terry towel pre-rolled with a roller into water with a temperature of 65-67 degrees, then quickly and strongly wrings it out and places it on the patient’s back. A prepared blanket and sheet are immediately placed on top of the towel, and the patient, with his hands behind his head, lies on his back.

A woolen cap is placed on the patient's head to cover his ears, and he is wrapped in a cotton blanket on top. After 20 minutes, unwrapping takes place. A warm flannelette shirt with long sleeves is put on the body. The patient, wrapped in a dry, warm blanket, should remain under it for at least 2 hours. The hat does not come off.

There is a saying: “If you feel a cold, starve it to death.” If you feel unwell, you need to urgently change your diet. Try to give up dense, heavy foods for 1-2 days. Go on a cleansing diet. Eat mostly salads, vegetable soups and fruits. Drink more. Sudorific teas and freshly squeezed juices, especially pineapple, are very useful.

Diet-Net.Nm.Ru

“Pie” made from mustard plasters

“To “break through” a stuffy nose, I invented the following remedy: add Vietnamese Golden Star balsam to a glass of freshly prepared boiling water on the tip of a knife. Cover your head with a towel and breathe through your nose the steam rising from the glass. After a few minutes, the runny nose was gone, although over time the nose would become stuffy again. The remedy is brutal, but very effective. And yet it should not be abused.” Svetlana Remennikova, Dmitrov

“When my cough doesn’t go away for a long time, I make myself a “pie” of mustard plasters for the whole night.

To do this, I place six mustard plasters with the “active” side up on a sheet of newspaper folded eight times, after slightly moistening them. I lie down on this “pie” with my entire back and fall asleep. During the night, mustard plasters emit constant but weak heat, which thoroughly warms the bronchi, but does not burn the skin through eight layers of newspaper.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and take them off if they start to sting my skin. This procedure cannot be repeated the next day; it is better to wait a few days. But usually one or two are enough for noticeable improvement to begin.” Larisa Sinelnikova, Kazan

“When I get sick, my mother begins to treat me immediately and with all available means: she puts me in a chair, puts my legs in a basin with hot water in which mustard is dissolved, rubs my chest with lard, at the same time drips oil and onions into my nose, and then gives me hot tea. with raspberries and honey. Then another mustard plasters on the back at night. It’s not easy to endure all this, but the next morning I’m usually healthy.” Anton Shemyatov, Kaliningrad

A heavy dose of vitamins will protect against colds

“During a flu epidemic, regular intake of large quantities of ascorbic acid is very helpful. I buy it in powders of 0.5 g:

• dissolve in water
• add honey and sugar

and I drink 1-2 g after meals in the morning and evening. Very often you manage not to get sick when everyone around you is sneezing and coughing.” Lidiya Loseva, Arkhangelsk

Radish juice with honey is great against prolonged coughs.

“Before, I often got a cold immediately after my period - apparently, there was some kind of weakening of the body. The doctor advised to take medications with:

• calcium
• and magnesium

and also eat nuts, especially hazelnuts. It really helped me become more resistant to colds.” Alla Gavrilova, Chelyabinsk

“My favorite tincture of Echinacea, an American sunflower, helps me fight colds and flu.

I start drinking it as soon as I hear about the approaching epidemic. Twenty drops a day for prevention and forty drops if you already feel signs of ill health.

This helps to avoid infection, and if the disease has not passed, you can recover much faster.” Yulia Zelenchuk, Moscow

“To cure an incipient runny nose, and at the same time prevent complications such as otitis media, I put on a warm ski cap at night and put tampons lightly moistened with boric alcohol in my ears. During the night, the ears warm up well, and the alcohol vapor disinfects the internal sinuses. In the morning the runny nose was gone.” Olga Tikhonovna Yurchenko, Alexandrov

Compress

Compresses, along with warming, work on a similar principle, affecting the source of inflammation with means that increase body temperature in certain areas: nose, throat, ear, chest, back, back of the head, palms, calves.

The compress usually consists of several layers. This is a fabric that has been previously moistened (in water or alcohol) and wrung out and on which the product itself will be applied. The next layer is ordinary cellophane or food oilcloth, on top of which there will be fabric or a bandage. To enhance the effect, you can put cotton wool between the oilcloth and the bandage.

Some people add a wool sock or scarf to this “pie.”

Compress recipes

• Moisten a cloth with sunflower oil and apply for 4 hours.
• Take 50 ml of vinegar, 20 ml of camphor oil and 30 ml of vegetable oil and mix everything thoroughly, then apply it to the body.
• Mix grated potatoes with red pepper and apply to the neck, chest, calves, soles or behind the ears.
• Grate the horseradish and place it in a thin layer on a cloth, apply to the neck for no more than 30 minutes.
• Mix boiled potatoes in their jackets with vegetable oil, mustard, honey and alcohol. This compress should be applied to the back.
• Mix warm milk with rye flour and pumpkin pulp. This compress is good for applying to the back, chest and neck.
• Wrap the throat with fresh cabbage leaves dipped in hot milk. Tie a warm scarf on top.
• Mix a tablespoon of sunflower oil in equal proportions with honey and alcohol (you can add mustard to enhance the effect). Applying it to the sore spot, wrap it tightly in cellophane, and on top - a woolen scarf or scarf.