Winter Wellness

In the final episode of season 1, host Karianne Jean discusses factors that contribute to sick bugs in the winter and how to help support the immune system to be more robust even in the cooler temperatures.

Make sure to subscribe where ever you listen to podcasts so you are the first to know when Season 2 drops in 2025!

Follow instagram.com/groundingelevation for more wellness content & show updates

Links to remedies discussed on this episode:

ACF vitamin remedy: https://a.co/d/3y0qwG9

Dr. Green Mom's Temperature Tamer: https://drgreenlifeorganics.com/collections/immune-support-1/products/temperature-tamer-for-infants-kids

Nebulizer: https://a.co/d/6xct11y

Homeopathy Must-Haves:

Oscillococcinum: https://a.co/d/cV263XY

Cold Calm: https://a.co/d/6gz14zk

Sinus Calm: https://a.co/d/5BVa2FB

Hylands Baby Cold & Mucus Relief: https://a.co/d/atMZZdM

FOLLOW Homeomother on instagram for tons of great info about utilizing homeopathy for you & your family: https://www.instagram.com/thehomeomother

Transcript

[00:03] Karianne: Welcome to Grounding Elevation, the podcast for open minds and open hearts to dig a little deeper and ascend a little higher on a quest to tap into.

[00:12] Our limitless potential mind, body and soul.

[00:15] Karianne: I'm Carrie Ann Jean, mom, wife, daughter, sister, artist, writer, learner, rebel, entrepreneur, psychology enthusiast. I have a deep passion for self improvement that has sent me down many roads of growth and learning and unlearning. I believe that God, universe, whatever you call the highest power, the source from where we all have come from, it speaks and it all but yelled at me to do this podcast. This is my leap of faith in spite of my insecurities and self doubt and humanness.

[00:45] So here we go.

[00:46] Karianne: Join us weekly as we embark together on a grounding elevation.

[00:57] Hello friends. Welcome back. Thank you so much for being here. This is actually going to be our last episode of season one of Grounding Elevation. I've had the best time recording these and I just so grateful for all the listeners and positive feedback that we've gotten for the show. So thank you so much. There will definitely be more seasons to come. I'm having way too much fun to stop now. Lots more guests that I plan to have on the podcast. Really excited about that, but this is going to be our last episode of season one. When will season two return? I'm not totally sure. I am due with our second sweet girl in January. So, you know, any new mamas out there know newborn stage is a wild time. Probably won't be recording podcasts for a couple months there, but I am excited to jump back in once, you know, we find some kind of routine, some kind of homeostasis. But for now, this will be our last episode of season one and I hope to bring many, many more guests on for season two. This whole first season has very much been an experiment. I've been getting my feet wet, did a couple interviews that were so much fun, so, so valuable. Got to talk with my mom on a couple episodes, got to talk with Dr. Peter Hines, which was such a blast. One of my favorite episodes to listen back to. And in the last couple weeks you got to hear episodes from the amazing Georgia Easley, Body Code and Emotion Code, practitioner and survivor of chronic illness and her wellness journey. Every interview that I've done has been so rewarding. So I really hope to have more guests on and I have more people that I want to interview. The only thing that's kind of been holding me up from interviewing is I don't have a great system for recording virtually and a lot of the people that I want to have on the podcast. Unfortunately, they don't live close, so I have to figure out how to do that virtually so I can bring you even more awesome content. But for our last episode here, it is wintertime when this will be dropping, and I wanted to just share some insights and wellness tips to staying well into combating any kind of illnesses or sicknesses that we run into a lot in the wintertime. So the reason, I think, and this is a theory, but it's supported by many different practitioners and doctors, it's not necessarily that there are more germs in the winter and there's more sickness in the winter. I think it's our environment and what we're exposed to and what we're not exposed to. So days get shorter in the winter. We are much less likely to be outside for any given amount of time in the winter because it's cold and it can be a little uncomfortable to be in the cold. And there's just not as much activities to do outside in the winter. So we are not getting fresh air. We are not being exposed to the elements as much. The cold weather itself is not what makes us get sick. You know, you, you remember, I'm sure either your parents, grandparents, you know, don't go, go outside, it's too cold, you'll catch a sickness. It's like, yes, overexposure to cold can make, can lower our immune system. For sure, we want to dress appropriately, but the cold itself doesn't actually contain disease. Right? Cold exposure can actually be beneficial. And going outside and breathing brisk air and just getting fresh air is so, so valuable and we just do a whole lot less of it. And to that same note, in the wintertime when the temperatures drop, we are not getting as much vitamin D. We are not getting exposed to the sunshine. The sun is out, the sun isn't out as many hours in the day, right? Our days get shorter, the daylight time gets shorter. So there's not as many opportunities to encounter the sun as there are in the spring and summertime, even the fall. And lack of sunlight and lack of not just the vitamin D it provides, but vitamin D is a big, big, big part of it. Lack of sunshine, sun is healing. Sun is life giving. If we're not getting some sun on us, on our eyes, on our face, on some level of our skin, if we can, if it's not too cold where we live, um, that can lead to our immune system not working as robustly as it maybe does in the warmer months or in the times when we Are more exposed to sun. So my first two tips for staying well in the winter is get outside, breathe the fresh air, find something to do that gets you out. Even if it's something simple that can be done inside, right? If you're like, I don't know what to do, it's cold and it's, you know, whatever, I don't want to be outside. Just bring a book outside or bring a meal outside or, you know, if you have little kids, bring out coloring or whatever. The more you can get yourself into a position to be in the sun. If the sun is out and access to the fresh air of the outdoors, it truly is so healing and being one with the earth, grounding, getting your bare feet on the ground, all those things lower information and are helpful to our immune system. So get outside, hopefully when there maybe is a peak of sun, and that will help a lot too. What also comes with quote unquote, flu season is holidays. And holidays are notoriously full of sugar. And, you know, I'm not here to demonize sugar, but I think as a culture, we're so overburdened with sugar and everything that it's really easy to go, oh, whatever, sugars and everything, like, there's nothing you can do about it. That's not necessarily true. And it's not just about. It's not just about like the initial effects of sugar, right? Like your blood, your blood sugar goes up when you encounter sugar. That's a normal physiological response when you eat anything with sugar in it, which can lead to metabolic stuff, it can lead to weight gain, things like that. My concern with sugar is really even not those things, though those are important as well. But when we're talking about staying well from acute sickness, something we want to keep in mind is sugar. It affects the white blood cells and essentially it can hinder your immune system for about five hours after consumption. And that is true for there was a study done that said it's about 75 grams of sugar to like really shut down the immune system or weaken it. There are other studies that show that even just 40 grams of added sugar from in one go, in one setting can lead to high inflammation markers, metabolic dysfunction, unfavorable changes in cholesterol, all. So if we couple the fact that our immune system is already not being boosted by access to the outside and things of that nature, and then we add in these holidays that are sugar heavy, to say the least. And it's not just one day, right? It's not like, oh, you can't have a Piece of pie at Thanksgiving, like, oh, you can't have a cookie at Christmas. We all know that it's not just the one day that we're eating different than we usually do. Right. There's leftovers and you're baking for people and people are giving you cookies and cakes and pies and. Right. We have all these different occasions. Right. All these different Christmas parties. There's so many instances. It's not just, you know, going hard on the sugar for one day. It's. It's an increase in our sugar intake in general over the course of probably about two months. So it's just something to keep in mind. Again, I'm not saying, oh, you shouldn't eat the pie at Thanksgiving, you shouldn't have the cookie at Christmas, or you shouldn't bake the cookies and have them in the house. Absolutely not. It's all in moderation. Have the piece of pie. Just don't eat the whole thing. You know, don't have seven pieces of pie in one sitting. You know, bake the cookies, bring them to your neighbors, have a cookie or two. Don't eat the, all of the cookie dough before you have a chance to make the cookies. It's all about moderation and being considerate and thoughtful. So my next tip is just watch the sugar. Be mindful of the sugar. It's not, avoid it like the plague. It's not, you know, it doesn't have to be that dramatic by any means necessary. There's also other ways that you can make things that you love that are very holiday centric in a healthier way. Right. If we're using whole food ingredients, maybe turning to something lower glycemic, like a, an agave or a coconut sugar rather than, you know, pure cane sugar. Even going for an organic option rather than a conventional option when it comes to making these baked goods. If we, we can make small tweaks, if it's something that we want to eat on a continual basis here and there, it's going to make a big difference. The sugar that comes from the fruit in pie is not the problem. It's the cups of added white overprocessed cane sugar that you're going to run into, you know, issues with. So just being mindful, being thoughtful of the sugar intake during these holiday seasons is really helpful. And it's not about how you look or, or, you know, oh, if you gain a pound or two, it's really not about that. It, it is about our immune function. And if we want to stay well during the holiday Season when, when pathogens are, are higher. Now that's another thing. Why, why are more people getting sick? It's, it's not, it's not because there are more pathogens in the winter than there are other seasons. But since a lot of people have a lower immune system, the sickness is going to take hold a lot easier. It's going to be passed a lot easier. You're, you're going to be more susceptible to get it, not just about your own terrain, your own immune system. But if more people are catching the bug, if you will, whatever the bug may be at the moment, then it's thr that that sickness is thriving a lot easier. And there's going to be more opportunities for you to catch it because more people are carrying those pathogens. I don't know if that, that's kind of like a convoluted thing I just said, but there's more people carrying the pathogens, therefore there's going to be more of a chance for you to encounter the pathogens. So you want to have, you want to support your immune system the best way you know how. So so far, watch the sugar, be mindful of it. Know that it's having an impact on your immune system. It's not just on an acute basis or a temporary basis or, you know, it riles your kids up or whatever the case. It also has an impact on your immune system. So it's something that I think most people don't think about all that often. The next tip I have for having a robust immune system during this time in the winter, naturally we are less active, we're less outside, there's less activities, there's less go, go, go. And I think there's a beauty to that. I think there's a beauty to seasons and to slowing down and to, you know, shortening your days. Your days are getting shorter, so shortening your days, shortening the overall activity of the day, life just seems to move a little bit. Well, life doesn't, but naturally our environment in nature moves a little bit slower, which is really beautiful. However, I think being really mindful about getting physical activity in mindful, conscious, intentional movement every day, whether that's a walk outside, whether that's, you know, some squats while you're watching a Christmas movie, whether that's a quick 20 minute workout where you do push ups and squats or burpees for two minutes, whatever that looks like for you. Continuing to move our bodies, that is helpful for our immune system keeping moving. We can lean into the coziness and the softness and the sometimes feeling of like slowness of the holiday season and what that brings, the cozy cuddliness, we can lean into that and still be mindful about getting some kind of physical activity in during the day. And that's going to help our immune system as well. Stay robust. Stress is another big one. The holiday season can be very stressful for a lot of people for many different reasons. Sometimes we experience grief and we feel the loss of our loved ones a lot during the holiday season. I know I do. There's money stress. You know, there's a lot of unrealistic expectations in some families about gift giving and, you know, wanting to do more and feeling stretched too thin financially and or feeling stretched too thin, you know, socially. There's lots of parties, right? Christmas parties and such, wanting to do all the things with. If you have kids, there's a lot of stress associated. You got to make all the things, you got to show up in all the places. You have to please everybody. You know, you have to be around sometimes family members that you don't really enjoy being around or you don't want to be around. You know, I've heard that a lot from other people as well. So the holiday season can be very stressful for some. Stress is, will lower your immune system. It will also increase the general inflammation in your body. We've talked in other episodes about keeping inflammation markers lower on a regular basis so that when a pathogen like a sickness or something does come up or an injury, your body has the bandwidth to handle it because it hasn't been stretched so thin with inflammation. Trying to battle inflammation in other places. So trying to keep those stress levels lower, meditation, breathing, and just letting go of other people's expectations of you, I think is a very underrated, underrated skill that I would love to see more people adopt. I know it's hard. It's hard for me too. But just lowering even your expectations of yourself during the holiday season and just kind of surrendering to staying well, keeping your body moving and just doing what you can do. But stress is another big one. Some other tips for staying well in the holiday season include supporting your immune system and any deficiencies. So we are going to have less access to the sun naturally because the hours of the sun are out are just less during the wintertime by design. So sometimes supplementing with a vitamin D supplement is option optimal for your health. A lot of integrative medicine practitioners will recommend it. There are so many benefits to seeing the sun that I don't like to minimize it to just the vitamin D aspect. But that is something that we can, we can do. We can incorporate vitamin D. Supplement is great. B12 is great. A liposomal vitamin C is incredibly powerful for fighting off any bugs. What's another one that I love? Elderberry syrup is awesome if you start to feel something coming on. Elderberry syrup is really strong in antioxidants and can help you if, even if you are already sick, it can help you recover a lot quicker. Some remedies that I love to have on hand. One is a, it's from Berry Treasure. It's a liquid vitamin. It's called acf. It is really gross. It does not taste good. But it's loaded with a lot of different herbs and vitamins that help fight off sickness. And it is always my go to. Another big one is garlic and oregano. So garlic, garlic, oil, oregano, oil of oregano. They're both naturally antibacterial. They're like in, they're like a natural antibiotic. So not medical advice by any means, but it can help resolve sicknesses. It also helps a lot with the microbiome in your stomach. Especially the oil of oregano is really good at kind of knocking out pathogens and parasites, things like that. So being mindful of having those on hand, those are my go tos also with garlic. I was getting like a lot of just like acute kind of colds when I was pregnant with my first daughter, Camila. And you know, there's not a whole lot that you can take or that you want to take when you're, you've just got a cold and you're pregnant or I guess oil of oregano isn't really recommended. There's a lot of things that aren't recommended that you take while you're pregnant. But my midwives actually recommended that I just cut up garlic and like take that like a pill because I was not going to eat raw garlic. My stomach was already, you know, not in great resilient conditions when I'm pregnant. So just the sound of eating raw garlic grossed me out. But it is so powerful and such a powerful antibiotic essentially. So they had me just cut up a clove of garlic and just drink it down like a pill. And that worked really well for me. So having garlic in general on hand is super helpful. Another remedy that I actually made this year that I'm really excited about and that you may want to consider is taking a raw local honey and garlic cloves and you kind of like mush up the garlic cloves a little bit and put them together with the honey. Just pour honey over the garlic cloves and you let it ferment for I think like its peak effectiveness for all like the most benefits is like six months at minimum. So you want to do this in advance, but it's still helpful even if you just do it for a month or a few weeks or whatever. But it is a great remedy to have on hand is just the garlic cloves, honey, they ferment. All you really have to do is like release the pressure in your jar every once in a while. I've been kind of trying to be mindful of it once a week or so. But that is going to amplify the antimicrobial properties of both the honey and the garlic. And I have not actually tried it yet, but I've heard that it's, it's got really powerful healing properties when you are sick. So garlic and honey, garlic oil, oil of oregano, acf, elderberry syrup, These are all natural remedies that are powerhouses and super helpful to have on hand when sickness does strike. Some other options that I keep stocked in my house. Dr. Green, mom, you can look her up. She has something called the temperature Tamer. And I love having this on hand for my daughter if she spikes a fe. Now I am not, I am not scared of a fever, but fevers can be really uncomfortable. I know that they have their place, they have a purpose, they are helping the body to heal. They are not necessarily something to be feared. So I don't want to shut them down. I don't want to stop a fever. However, this tincture is an all natural herbal remedy that helps the body to just release the heat so it just doesn't get out of control and it can like relieve some of that pent up heat, if you will. It works great for our family and it's something that I give to my daughter when she spikes a fever to just help her release the heat. Another really amazing option that I always have on hand, especially anytime sticky bugs come knocking, is homeopathy. Now homeopathy is kind of obscure. Nobody really knows how it works. It works off of the theory of like cures like, and I've always heard that and I still don't really understand how that, how that works. But I will tell you that homeopathy is a game changer for me and it, it has worked better than most things for me. So if you follow, there's an account on Instagram that I personally love the homeomother I'll tag her in the show notes and on Instagram for everybody to be able to follow her. She has a mom group that you can join that has so much helpful information, information about how to use homeopathy. If you don't want to dive into the world of homeopathy, you absolutely do not need to. They have some really amaz remedies that are already, you know, branded properly and ready to go. Boiron is a really big, is a really big brand for homeopathy. Probably even seen it in places like Walgreens and Walmart. You can get it just about anywhere. Amazon, but they have things like the. I'm not going to say it right. A silococcusinum O S C I L L O C O C C I N U M A silococcal. It's like a really long word, but it is the number one flu remedy and it works so good, it will cut your illness time down significantly. It's something that I always go to. So they have that and then they have other options like throat calm and sinus calm and allergy calm. And this is all through. I believe the company is Boiron. Yeah, B O I R O N. They have a ton of different prepackaged remedies. They're not single remedies. You don't need to have any experience or education on homeopathy to use them. And they work really well and I always keep our home stock. Talked with the different remedies for the different things that could come up and they really have served us really well. For kids. Highlands is the brand that they make a mucus and colds remedy. It's also homeopathy, but it's liquid. And that is what I always turn to when my girl has snotty problems. Whether it's, you know, snotty nose or cough or anything like that, she doesn't get sick a ton. Thank God. Very, very grateful for health. But just like any kid, any toddler sickness comes knocking, it's bound to happen. And when it does, they. That is my go to remedy. It's. It's so helpful to help clear out the mucus and not shut down any of the helpful, really helpful symptoms that work to relieve. Another remedy that I'm absolutely obsessed with is our breathing treatment. We use a nebulizer and we do medical grade saline. You can just do medical grade saline and that is helpful steam. If you don't have a nebulizer, just access the steam. Breathing in steam is really helpful, but the Nebulizer itself is really cool because you can put whatever you want to inhale essentially into the machine. And we follow. I believe it's Dr. McCullough's protocol with the medical grade peroxide and iodine with the saline. And that has been such a game changer because it just kills any pathogen before it really has a chance if you can catch it quick enough. So that's been really helpful to us and definitely worth looking into. I believe it's Dr. Peter McCollough's protocol. So those are kind of my go tos for staying healthy and getting healthy in the wintertime. So I hope this holiday season does not bring sickness. I hope you feel great and feel all the holiday cheer and joy and magic of such a beautiful season. And my hope is that we can just nurture ourselves, nurture our bodies, give ourselves the grace and the rest that will lead to a really healthy holiday season. That's my hope. That's my hope for us all. That's my. That's my prayer for you that we can nurture our bodies and stay well and work with the elements, even if it's not our nature or our habit. I guess I could say our nature is to be outside, but if it's not our habit to get outside, just do our best to to do it, get outside, see the sun. When you can keep our bodies moving in a nurturing but still forward motion way. It also helps the exercise that I was talking about, just getting your body moving for at least, you know, 10, 20 minutes. Whatever you spare in the day, intentional activity, movement. It also helps with our hormones because I think, you know, not seeing the sun as much and the stress of the holiday season, sometimes feeling that grief, all of that can contribute to like, you know, the seasonal blues, if you will. Doctors like to call it seasonal depression. I start to feel it a little when it's just been too many days of grayness outside. But what I have found to be really beneficial for that as well is just getting outside anyway, even if it's not perfect conditions, even if it's not super convenient, there's just something so beautiful about the fresh air and just grounding, getting your bare feet on the cold grass or concrete or sand or wherever you live. So I hope you stay well. I will do a post and link a lot of these remedies in the show notes as well as on our Instagram @groundingelevation. I have had so much fun doing this podcast. Thank you so much for listening and I can't wait to talk to you again in season two. So until next time. I love you. Ciao.