I’ve treated hundreds of kids with homeopathy, and I’ve noticed something over the years – kids are getting sicklier. Not just sick – they tend to look wan and peaked, with dark circles under their eyes and perpetual sniffles, and they tend to be whiny, fussy and demanding (because their brains are irritated with toxins, I believe).

Except – here’s what’s interesting – the kids from overseas. Here in Cambridge, Mass., home of Harvard and MIT, we get families coming from all over the world, typically for the dad to go to graduate school or work for a biotech company. The mom will bring the kids in to see me because she wants a relationship with a local homeopath.

The kids are calm and friendly, with bright eyes and rosy cheeks, and the mom will say, “My kids are the only ones in their class who never get sick and have never been on antibiotics. I have a homeopathic remedy kit and I treat them at home when they start to come down with something.”

I’ve heard this often enough, I started to think, why can’t American families do this too? This was the inspiration behind my book, Your Natural Medicine Cabinet, and my urge to share my experience from more than 30 years in natural healing.

Favorite kid-friendly natural remedies

To break the endless cycle of sniffles, sore throats and antibiotics, here are some of my favorite kid-friendly natural remedies. Most are available in any health food store (except a few which are only online, such as Vitacost or even Amazon).

Elderberry syrup is antiviral, a great cough syrup, and tastes like fruit, so kids love it. It works as well against the flu as Tamiflu, according to research in Norway and Israel. Look for a honey-sweetened syrup, since honey also has antimicrobial properties and it’s healthier than the sugar sweetening in some elderberry syrups. My favorite brand is Maine Medicinals’ agave-sweetened elderberrry-blueberry mix.

“Nip It in the Bud” is my nickname for another favorite that belongs in every home. This is something you take the day before you or your child gets sick. You know the feeling for yourself – you haven’t been getting enough sleep, you’ve been too busy to make healthy food, you’re feeling run down and then you get that scratchy feeling in the back of your throat. You probably know when your kid is about to get sick: he’s flopped on the couch with dark circles under his eyes, not interested in his favorite food or games, cranky and restless.

Either way, it’s “uh-oh”, sickness on the way! unless you take “Nip It in the Bud” or, as it’s really called, the cell salt “Ferrum phos.” A large well-stocked health food store may carry cell salts (homeopathically-energized minerals) but you’ll probably have to get it online. It will appear under its full name, Ferrum phosphoricum, and you want the 6x potency. It will come in little soft tablets that dissolve instantly in the mouth, and the dose is two tablets three times a day.

More specific homeopathic medicine

By the next day, most likely you or your child will be up and around. If not, you’ll need a more specific homeopathic medicine to match your symptoms.

Arsenicum matches the typical symptoms of the first stage of a cold and some flus: “nose running like a faucet” with a watery discharge that makes you want to wad up kleenex and stuff your nostrils! You’ll probably feel totally exhausted; most people wouldn’t spend five days in bed for a simple cold, but someone who needs Arsenicum might. If you need this remedy, you probably also feel anxious and restless, especially after midnight when most likely you can’t sleep and you want to get up and pace around.

The other great remedy for this watery stage of a cold is Allium cepa. Both Allium and Arsenicum help when you can’t stop sneezing and your nose won’t stop running. (Because homeopathic medicines are given to match a symptom picture rather than a diagnosis, these remedies also work great for hayfever with lots of sneezing and sniffling.)

Gelsemium is another great flu remedy where the person is totally exhausted, like the one needing Arsenicum, but there’s a different “flavor” to Gelsemium symptoms. While the Arsenicum person is anxious and restless, the Gelsemium person is “dull, droopy, drowsy, dopy and dizzy” (the memory charm for homeopathy students).  You can actually tell when someone needs Gelsemium because their eyelids droop to half-mast!

Kali bic is a little known homeopathic medicine that deserves top billing because it’s “king of the boogers.” Kali bic is for thick, sticky mucus anywhere in the body, mucus that feels like rubber cement and may come out in long strings, or may not want to come out at all. The mucus might be in the nose, sinuses, larynx or chest. It’s hard to budge so you’re likely to need repeated doses of the remedy in water (see instructions at the end for how to make remedies stronger by putting them in water). Look for this unsung hero in your health food store under its full name, Kali bichromicum.

As for preventing the flu, you’ll need to order this one online: Influenzinum (note the name is simply “influenza” with an “inum” tacked on the end). Get it in a 9c potency and take two pellets once a week for four weeks at the beginning of flu season, then once a month for the remainder of flu season. If you are directly exposed to someone with the flu at home or work, take another dose. This protocol has worked for hundreds of people in my practice. It’s great to have a natural flu preventive, given that the flu shot is ineffective and sometimes harmful, according to a recent article by a Harvard postdoc working at Johns Hopkins, published in the prestigious British Medical Journal.

Buying and taking the remedies

Your local health food store will have homeopathic medicines in a 30c (medium strength) potency, which works well for most people. (I like to “shop local” but of course you can also get all of these products online.) One dose is two pellets dissolved in the mouth, four times a day when the symptoms are really severe, twice a day when they are mild. You take just enough to get the ball rolling and start feeling better, then you wait – you don’t take more until you feel the symptoms coming back. If the symptoms have shifted – say from a watery discharge to thick mucus – you change the remedy accordingly.

Giving them to kids

Kids take the same dose as adults, since in homeopathy we don’t adjust by bodyweight, we adjust the dose based on the life-energy – and if anything, kids tend to have a stronger Vital Force than adults!

Kids love taking remedies, and I have children in my practice as young as 4 asking for remedies by their long Latin names!

If sugar is an issue

No getting around it, homeopathic medicines are prepared on sucrose and/or lactose. If the amount of sugar in a pellet is a problem, dissolve two pellets in a half cup of water, stir really well, then take a teaspoon as a dose.

If even that is too much sugar, your options include:

– dabbing the solution on the temples, lips, or wrists, anywhere the skin is thin

– throwing a handful of the pellets in bathwater

– ordering tiny pellets from Natural Health Supply or Washington Homeopathics (get the half-dram bottle and the pellets will be as small as grains of sand).

If your spouse is skeptical

This is a common pattern called Skeptical Spouse Syndrome! Typically, open-minded moms try homeopathy for themselves and their kids, while the scientist-spouse remains skeptical. I’ll write more about this in a future blog, but for now, here are a few helpful facts:

– Homeopathic remedies are considered medicines by the FDA, which supervises their manufacture for quality and purity.

– The safety of these medicines is demonstrated by 200 years of continuous usage.

– Homeopathy is part of the national health care system in many countries around the world.

– Research on homeopathy has mostly been conducted overseas, hence it is relatively unknown in the US, yet new research studies come out every month to document homeopathy’s effectiveness on adults, babies, animals and even plants.

– The Swiss government spent five years reviewing the available research on homeopathy and studying its effectiveness for its own citizens and concluded the homeopathy is just as effective as conventional medicine yet significantly less expensive.

The best way to convince a skeptic, though, is through experience. Homeopathy can often (not always) work quickly and dramatically. Keep trying and you’ll have one of those “OMG how did it work so fast?” results with it!

Note: I have no financial interest in any of the products I recommend.

Burke Lennihan, RN, CCH (Certified Classical Homeopath) is a health expert on Dr. Oz’s Sharecare.com, blogs for Psychology Today, and practices at the Lydian Center for Innovative Healthcare in Cambridge, Mass. She generously makes her wonderful book, Your Natural Medicine Cabinet, available at cost to Fearless Parent and other likeminded groups for fundraising. Contact her at Burke@YourNaturalMedicineCabinet.com for details.

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