Responding to winter infections with herbal medicine at the first signs of illness, could make all the difference to your recovery. In particular Chinese herbs could give your recovery a great head start.

Activate your body’s defenses

While symptoms of infection can make you feel lousy, responding to these signs of illness with immune modulating herbal medicines can help you on your way to recover from symptoms of:

• Pain, fever and sore throat
• Mucus congestion
• Laryngitis
• Tonsillitis
• Sinusitis

So what can you do?

Reaching for immune stimulating herbs can improve your body’s response to colds, flu and upper respiratory infections. You can also reduce the severity and duration of symptoms with specific herbal medicines. Modern research demonstrates that Echinacea (known to stimulate the immune system), works more effectively when combined with immune modulating herbs that also help manage fever, assist healthy lymphatic drainage and resolve mucous congestion. The following herbs combine well with Echinacea to enhance its therapeutic effects during the infection phase of illness;

• Isatis tinctoriaroot and leaf
• Lonicera japonica flower bud
• Forsythia suspensa fruit
• Andrographis paniculata leaf
• Platycodon grandiflorus root
• Magnolia lilifloraflower bud
• Schizonepeta tenuifolia herb

Mr Vitamins recommends

FUSION Health® Cold & Flu (new formula - extra strength)

Watch this quick video to find out how to activate your body’s defences with Chinese herbs.

You can find out more about FUSION Health® Cold & Flu here

Make your first move early!

At first signs of infection consider taking Fusion® Health Cold & Flu 2-3 tablets twice daily, and continue for two days after symptoms have cleared. Keeping a bottle in your home dispensary makes it easy to respond to infections quickly. If you have a cough or bronchial congestion you can also add Cough Lung Tonic. Tip for kids: Fusion® Health Cold & Flu can also be given to children either as a liquid dose in juice or in tablet form which can be easily crushed and mixed with food (raw honey works really well). As always, whatever questions or concerns you have regarding your health this winter all you have to do is drop by Mr Vitamins and ‘Ask a Naturopath’.