I'm lacking in SO much knowledge about herbal remedies, but I've increased my studies this year and I've been experimenting with more things.  Probably the biggest challenge has been giving up the "bad stuff" so we don't need to work so hard to recover!  Have you ever eaten too much food or the wrong food and immediately knew you could have done without it?  One thing I know for sure I shouldn't do is drink beverages made with high fructose corn syrup when I feel a sore throat coming on.  For some reason,  they accelerate the progression of the sickness, for me.  Even without a sore throat, last night I got a drive thru drink and within minutes, I had a runny nose. 

Thankfully, I'm not sick this morning, but this week, we've been battling a few things and I've kept some herbs handy to minimize the sore throats and fatigue.  Catching sickness early gives the immune system a boost to do the job it's already trying to do.  The sickness around here started where it usually does...after being with a bunch of kids on the weekend, our 8 yo woke up with a sore throat a few days later.  I made him a cup of hot tea with yarrow and I made him a throat wrap with ginger, peppermint, sage and rosemary.  Under his feet, I put a garlic poultice and he laid on the couch.  Our older son had just come home from camp and was a little under the weather, so I made him tea and the garlic poultice for his feet too.  By the next morning, they were both running around the house and feeling much better.  The little one had a runny nose and dry throat in the morning, but all was better after breakfast. 

In my reading this morning, I came across the following excerpt from a testimony off of the website for bulkherbstore.com:

"This morning my Husband woke up with an RA flair up. Early this morning I was in the woods to get some burdock root (because my dried BHS supply is gone). I boiled the root with some plantain leaves in olive oil. Once reduced, I strained out the roots and and poured some into a little spray bottle, the rest I mixed with bees wax. He's been using this for about 3 hours now, and his pain is diminished by 1/2 and he says is getting better as the morning wears on."

I have some boiled burdock root cooling in the other room.  I'm going to try it out on joint pain, back pain and a bladder infection.  I'll write back and report how it's working, but I'll have to wait until my "lab assistants" wake up.