8 Tips to Staying Healthy in a Sickly World

Unschooling is interest based learning where children naturally learn from their environment and are trusted to learn what they need to learn to succeed in life.  Parents act as a resource person and role model to help educate their children in a respectful manner.  Unschooling will often look different with each family.  This blog includes my family's approach to the unschooling philosophy.  I will sometimes include ideas and challenges and sometimes I will include a blog of an actual day or event of our unschooling family.  Feel free to follow my blog if you would like to learn more.  Thank you for taking time to read my blog!


Today's entry is not directly related to unschooling or homeschooling, but instead I am going to touch on a major benefit of this lifestyle along with some tricks I have discovered to keep my family healthy.  What I mean by healthy is maybe 1 or 2 colds a year and almost completely free of fevers or infections.  Stomach viruses are also almost non-existent where it has been an issue maybe twice since we started having children 7 1/2 years ago.  These are things that I have found helpful and not everyone may agree with what I have to say, but this works for us and may also be helpful for others.


1.  We completely avoid Dr. offices unless something major happens.  After child #1 having a really scary reaction to immunizations at his 4 month immunization schedule because of Prevnar and the medical professionals denying this was the cause even though it was very obvious, we also decided not to do immunizations with the youngest and only did the first set without Prevnar for my 2nd child. We have not done well baby visits with the youngest after four months.  Within the last couple years, my husband and I have done our own research regarding immunizations to discover that all immunizations have a possible side effect of death.  I do not know if this is related to the immunization itself or the preservatives used in it, but either way, I do not see the need to put a poison into a completely healthy child that could possibly have the side effect of death.  I am not completely against immunizations, but from my experience, I do not see any benefits from them.  If I am proven otherwise and it seems like the health of my children would be better if I got their immunizations, which could happen, I would do this for their benefit.  However, based on personal experience, good health has been the result of not having them for my children.


The result from these decisions has been very healthy children with maybe 2 colds a year and my 2nd child has only had one fever that I was aware of at the age of 4 and she just turned 5 years old and has never had an antibiotic in her healthy little body.  The youngest has only had 2 fevers that I am aware of.  The first one was from an ear infection that, at the time, I treated with an antibiotic, but later learned the hydrogen peroxide can heal an ear infection if a little is placed in the infected ear with a cotton swab.  The 2nd one was caused by a virus and went away on it's own once the virus left his little body.  My oldest child has been very healthy since we made these changes when he was around 3 or 4 years old.  Prior to this, he did get sick about every other month and would get high fevers after each set of immunizations and from viruses that he would get often.  However, once we stopped doing immunizations and well child visits at the Dr.'s office, this was no longer an issues for him.


2. We avoid regularly scheduling activities in the morning so that the children can sleep as long as their bodies need to sleep.  Sleep is the best way to naturally fight off infections.


3. We eat mainly an organic, vegetarian diet with occasional meat and we drink a lot of water.  We try to grow a lot of our own food when we are able and have our own chickens for fresh eggs during the warmer months.  We also have local raw honey readily available to help fight off possible infections and bacteria.  A very nice doctor recommended buckwheat honey for a cough suppressant when she learned that I was supportive of natural remedies.  I have not used this yet because no one has had a cough since I found some, but I have this available if we need it.


4. Aside from organic laundry soap, I only clean with vinegar, water and baking soda.  I even use this for dishes.  I wash dishes by hand and clean the food off and then spray it with vinegar and water and rinse it off.  I have vinegar and water spray bottles that I use for everything.  I use baking soda occasionally too if something needs to be scrubbed or have a deeper cleaning.


5. We avoid crowds of people and if we are in a public place, we do a lot of hand washing or use hand sanitizers.  The children also know to avoid others who appear ill.


6.  We exercise regularly.  During the warmer months, we have park days at least once a week and the children spend most of their time outside.  During the winter months, each child has at least one outside activity where they exercise each week and they are always chasing each other around the house and playing.  I do yoga daily and try to get outside and move around as much as I can when the weather is nice and my husband likes to go running fairly regularly when it isn't icy outside. 


7.  If a virus does attack our home, I wash all bedding including bedspreads and pillows and may do this repeatedly if needed.  Since I have been doing this, instead of having a virus go through our family of five over a period of 2 months, it is usually gone within a couple weeks.


8.  The kids play in the dirt, wrestle with our dogs who are not always overly clean and sometimes probably even eat dirt.  This is a natural way for young children to build up their immune systems.  We also do not overly wash vegetables from our garden.  There are vitamins in nature that are often cleansed away in fruits and vegetables that you buy at the store and I have read that many of these vitamins help build up the immune system to fight off various health problems including cancers.  I am not an expert on this by any means, but it makes a lot of sense to me.


These are the tricks I have learned to maintain a healthy household over the last 7 1/2 years. A main motivator for me is that I get very annoyed by illnesses that invade my home, especially when they are unnecessary and preventable.  I have also learned that it is best to do my own research and not just trust what I am told, even if this person is a medical or education professional.  Since I started having children, I have learned to question everything when I used to accept what I was taught.  Part of it could be because I am somewhat lazy and do not like doing extra work.  Another reason is because I have been forced to gain wisdom over the last few years and not be as trusting with information that is given to me.  I have learned to think for myself more and not just accept the norm or mainstream information that is readily available.  I have learned to dig deeper to find truth.  I hope this information is helpful for you.  This is what I have found helpful for us.  My goal is to raise my children in the healthiest, most educational environment possible and this is where unschooling and being an independent thinker in relation to health issues plays a part with having a family.  Life is too short to waste time on something that is annoying and preventable.  That is my philosophy.


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140212144611.htm