How to Heal Faster with Dr. Victoria Maizes

Sure.

So acute or short-lived problems, in general, they're going to get better.

They're not things that you're going to live with for the rest of your life.

So maybe the most common thing would be you get a viral infection, a cold.

And in Western medicine, we don't really have much that we can recommend that would help support someone's immune system to recover more quickly from a cold.

But in integrative medicine, we actually have a wide range of things that we can recommend.

So as an example...

there is evidence that zinc lozenges can be helpful.

At the very first sign, now zinc lozenges are a very low dose of zinc, about five milligrams, maybe seven milligrams.

So because the dose is about 25, you're going to want to be using one of these every two or three hours.

But you know what? It soothes the throat.

It actually feels good when you're using that zinc lozenge.

There's some evidence, not super strong evidence, for vitamin C, but we know that more antioxidants like vitamin C, eating more fruits and vegetables.

There's evidence for garlic.

Garlic has antimicrobial, not just antiviral, but also antifungal and antibacterial properties.

And when my kids were young, garlic was one of my favorite things to give them when they had a cold.

I would... take a clove of garlic and press it, let it sit for about 10 minutes, and then I'd actually mix it into a little bit of cream cheese.

So rather than onion and chive, my kids had garlic and cream cheese and, you know, put it on a bagel, put it on a piece of toast, and they were just fine eating it, and it shortens the duration.

of that cold.

But the other thing, and this comes from Ayurvedic medicine, is clean your nasal passages.

So we all hate that feeling of being super stuffy and congested.

If you go to sleep that way, you often sleep with your mouth open, then you don't sleep well.

You wake up with post-nasal drainage, then you have all this gunk, you have to cough out.

Well, if you use a neti pot to rinse your sinus passages, neti pot, sometimes a little challenging for people.

So I often recommend a NealMed sinus rinse, which is this little squeeze bottle that you put warm salt water with a little bit of baking soda that comes pre-packaged, or you could make it yourself.