Greetings Dear Readers,

Yep, I got one of those nasty summer colds.  Here I am in Toronto, in a summer with extreme heatwaves for the last two months, and then getting a "cold" which is not cold at all but making me uber hot and sweaty, as if I weren't enough already!  Anyhow, I just happened to have some yarrow tea on hand (that I just happened to have because it's a great  hair rinse) and it so happens to also be good for "releasing the Exterior" as they say in TCM, or "sweating it out" in lay terms.  The cool thing about Yarrow is that once you start sweating it out, this breaks the fever so you end up cooler, yay!

I felt perplexed as to why I got this cold in the first place with all the Vitamin D, camu camu, and elderberry that I take.  But truth be told, I was spooning back the peanut butter like the factory would close tomorrow.  Now that's a lot of Damp Heat that peanuts create, on top of the damp hot humid weather going on all summer, what's a girl to do?  Oh but it tasted so good! And no problems for two months, then whammo!

So I gave yarrow a try and the exciting thing was that this cold felt really different from every cold I've had in the last 15 years I'd say. Rather than lingering on for 9 days, it came on hard and left just as quickly.  In TCM, when the Defensive energy (read: immune system) is weak, the body can't put up a big fight against the pathogen so the bug carries on and on.  If the Defensive Qi is really strong, the fight is intense, high fever, feeling really sick, then suddenly it's all over.  That's how I feel this morning. Like these two have had their duel - I couldn't even sleep til 1 am last night nose running like Niagara Falls, throat sore as anything, achy joints, felt sick as a dog, and now this morning I feel almost normal, congestion all dried up, throat is 90% better, a little bit achy still, and tired because of poor sleep, but it feels like the bug is 90% gone.  Wow, that hasn't happened to me since I was a kid!

So I think the peanut butter feasts eventually caught up with me, but the yarrow tea that I drank over and over yesterday really strengthened my immune system quickly pushing the pathogen out hard and fast.  And now here I am, ready to go to work today.  Feels like a small miracle:)

Yarrow tea is a great decongestant that melts all the phlegm in your body down to a nice watery-ness that your body can expel really easily.  My herbal teacher Diane Kent explained to us that some over-the-counter cold medications actually dry up your lungs without helping the body release the pathogen.  So the Dampness now becomes Phlegm which is so much harder to expel causing the virus to linger for a lot longer.  In a nut shell, if you're getting a cold, try to take a day off work and load up on the yarrow tea.  It will strengthen your Defensive Qi so you can push that mess out of your body quickly and then you can live as normal, but all the wiser knowing that too much Damp foods like peanut butter and a sticky summer heat wave just don't go together.

Yours in health,
Cynthia