Monday 2 November 2015

Natural Home remedy Sinus drip fix 

 

Please note...........If you take any kind of blood thinner medicines already or have trouble with blood not clotting, you shouldn't try it without checking with your doctor, as it would cause problems and might be dangerous.

  

Today was the first day I have been able to run in what feels like about 8 months.
Last year I developed a sinus drip that meant I couldnt do anything without my nose pouring or my eyes streaming accompanied by sneezes.

I am not one to go to the doctors for such things, I dont see the point when all they will do is give something to counteract the result and nothing to  find the underlying problem.

In the UK the allergy treatments available are laughable even assuming they had proper tests for allergies in the first place. You are more likely to be put on steroids and given an inhaler for the rest of your life than be actually helped to help yourself naturally.

My online researches led to my belief that it is most likely mould somewhere or maybe dust mites but despite frantic cleaning binges, the situation prevailed.
Sometimes I would go 2 weeks without so much as a sneeze, grow complacent about it and get back on the treadmill and then have a week solid of sneezing and streaming nose.

This is added to my self diagnosed dairy intolerance/allergy (I found avoiding all dairy has improved my health hugely ) which I already address through diet and careful reading of labels in grocery shops.  No more exzema or constant need to pee. No more flaking fingernails and bad breath or acrid body odour.

 

Getting back to the sinuses...
I tried various things to cure or at least improve the Sinus situation .
I think it may have been a longer term thing because prior to avoiding dairy, I had post nasal drip for about 10 years.
That is also sinus related and is really just the sinuses draining down the back of the throat.
Once the dairy was eliminated, so was the Post nasal drip.
It is only this last several months that the sinus thing alone has returned .
I would rather have had a return of the post nasal drip because having your nose streaming and needing to sneeze so often is not much fun , interferes with excercise and makes simple things like preparing a meal, a much less enjoyable experience (hand washing after every single sneeze or handkerchief use).

Most nights have been horrible, really blocked sinuses so that I have had my mouth open to breath.


So anyway.
I tried nose filters.
These are little tiny filters you wear inside your nostrils . They did help hugely at night but during the day not so much. Also they were quite expensive for something that looked like I might need it for years.
Manic cleaning..
Speaks for itself really and didnt make any differentce.
Nasal irrigation..
Really just a nostril wash using salted water,it helped for a matter of minutes.

Inhaling steam with tea tree oil.
Worked short term(maybe an hour) each time.

Oil pulling
You swoosh oil around in your mouth for 20 minutes each morning.
This was somewhat effective (it leads to clearing your throat as residue seems to be pulled up and into the oil and gets spat out) but not very long term although it does wonders for firming up gums and whitening teeth.

Then I found something that actually works!

About a month ago I read about natural antihistamines of various kinds.
This is of great interest to me because all the antihistamine tablets I have found, have included dairy in the ingredients in the form of whey.
Anyway, two of the natural antihistamines I took note of, were Honey and Turmeric.

I had both Honey and Turmeric in the cupboard and so I took a teaspoon of honey with 1/3rd tea spoon of turmeric and went to bed.

I slept all night without having my mouth open.
Next morning the usual nose tickle was returning that usually indicates the start of the sneezes, so I took another dose.

I went right through till evening without a sneeze or need for a handkerchief.
This went on for about a week.
Each time that  I felt a slight tingle or thought my nose felt a little like I had the start of a cold coming, I would take another dose.

Following advice online, I kept it to less than 2 teaspoons of turmeric over a day.
Now I take 1 in the morning, one at night and sometimes one mid way through the day.
I havent had one debilitating day since I began so it looks like for me at least, this is working.

Taste... It tastes a little like sweet cough medicine when taken by the teaspoon.
I read that it is also a popular treatment for arthiritis due to the anti inflamatory properties of the turmeric and that, in India, it is often taken with hot water and sometimes lemon as a curative drink.
It works well as a drink I found.
Sometimes a person will also take pepper with it to enhance the properties of the turmeric.

I decided to make a portable version.
A sort of tablet.
I bought some more turmeric from Amazon and a jar of honey( just the ordinary kind,nothing fancy).
I poured some of the honey into a little bowl and added turmeric until it made a paste.
Then balled the mixture into well...balls. It's quite sticky .
I dehydrated the balls for 24 hours and then packed them in airtight wrapping.
The balls are very slightly soft still but they dont stick together and can be carried in a bag or pocket in a little jar .

A dose is tiny, about 1/3rd of a ball so about 6mm . Easy to swallow and tasteless like a tablet (unless you take a while to swallow them down ).
Turmeric apparently thins blood and so helps against cholesterol troubles .

Remember If you take any kind of blood thinner medicines already or have trouble with blood not clotting, you shouldn't try it without checking with your doctor , as it would cause problems and might be dangerous.





Monday 2 March 2015

Amazon Kindle unlimited is it worth subscribing?

I joined Amazon Kindle unlimited at the end of January to try out their 1 months free trial.

Right from the start, I thought I would borrow from it to the max
to firstly discover,
Is it really unlimited?
And secondly to see
What the quality of the books on offer in the kindle borrowing library were like.

I borrowed my first 10 books and opened my Kindle reading program which is on my PC.
The archived section had 10 new items showing.
Clicking through they show that they are  there but have yet to be downloaded.

I clicked and clicked on each one and eventually it downloaded.
One click seemed to do nothing.

Once downloaded they are in the downloaded folder not the archived section.

Anyway to get to the point..

I now had 10 new books to read.
A quick peruse showed me that 9 out of the 10 were very poor in quality.
One was only 4 pages .

One had terrible grammar and spelling.

How to books really should describe how to actually do what the title states they will.


I speedily read all I needed to of the first 10 books and returned to amazon for 10 more.
You can have any amount of books but only 10 at once so each new book is a replacement for one that you have previously borrowed.

Every day for 1 month I did the same thing and so borrowed between 15 and 25 books a day.

All the books I borrowed were non fiction.

Strategic book authoring


A new idea revealed itself to me.
Not my idea, but that of many of the kindle book authors.
Write a vague book on any subject and just add links to your affiliated pages.!

Some of the books with links, go to empty domains which is not great either.

A second strategy was quite common too and that was the 'series' style books.
They come in 3 flavours.
1 is the  Part book. It is part 1 of a series of books all around the same subject for example
circus tricks part 1 circus tricks with balls
circus tricks part 2 circus tricks with knives
circus tricks part 3 circus tricks clowning around
circus tricks part 4 circus tricks acrobatics

Then there are the series but not that different variety for example
Women's hair secrets
Men's hair secrets
Pet's hair secrets

Last of all come the speed written series which relies entirely on the name to sell
For example
how to keep a diary for Barrington rovers fans
how to keep a diary for Collywood scrubs  fans
how to keep a diary for Hedgerow united fans
how to keep a diary for Eggbert city  fans

Some Authors kindly offer a free book or advice if you click through to their website as a reward for 'buying' their book.
On clicking through it isn't unusual to find that the free book is only available if you type in  your email and you are signing up to a newsletter .

Sometimes the link is not to a free book but  a subscription to lessons or a paid for book presumably not hosted on Amazon.

Dubious content


During my 1 months trial, I read books which suggested stealing from shops.

Some books talked about selling broken electric items to people at boot sales because they cant check them until they get them home.

One book suggested getting  food from food banks even if you can afford to buy it anyway  because it is free and easy to get!!

A most unscrupulous author described buying and gutting electrical items and then adding weight,sealing and returning them for the purchase price. I hope he was joking but it was difficult to tell.

It does lead me to believe however, that an ebook submitted to amazon for selling on their website may not actually get looked at before it is offered up for sale.


It wasn't all bad
There were a few gems floating in the scummy waters of the Amazon.
Out of some 400 books that I downloaded and read in my trial time, I came across maybe 20 that I would have liked to re-borrow a second time and ONE that I might possibly have bought .

Value for money?


So is it worth it at £7.99 a month?

Well I would say No.
Not unless you read voraciously and spend more than that every month on books.

A better way to use it would be to go onto Amazon when you are looking for a particular book, check whether it has the ' borrow this book with Amazon kindle unlimited' label and if it does, see if the price for that book is cheaper than one months subscription.
If it is and that is the only book you are after, just buy it
If you need to read several books ,they are all in the unlimited library and you could do so in 30 days, then subscribe for the month .
Obviously you can re-borrow a book that takes longer than 30 days to read but that means subscribing for that next month also.
If it is more expensive to buy it than to subscribe for 1 month and you arent going to read it more than once, then subscribe for 1 month and borrow it to read.

You can delete a book from your device but it is still 'borrowed' until you actively return it or the 30 days runs out.

£7.99 does not buy any of the books remember. If you borrow one, read it and like it, you would need to go back onto Amazon and actually buy it .

Since finishing my trial which ended on the 26 th of Feb , I have bought one Ebook on Amazon.
It was The Goldfinch by Donna Tart and was not included in the unlimited books offered .
In fact no single book that I searched for on first joining, was listed in those that I could borrow.

Anyway,if you are interested to see for yourself, why not give the free trial a try?
Write yourself a message on paper to remind yourself on which day the 30 days runs out and stick it by your computer (or kindle) .

© 2015 theamazingwitteringwench