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I don’t like taking medication. I just needed to say that so you know why I even looked up the dangers of taking Tylenol, Advil, or any over the counter medicines to battle a cold. Our family has recently gone through a Spring cold that has been hard to beat. With preschoolers in the house, I am responsible to know how to best treat their symptoms but also I am responsible to do my best to help them get well. So the search was on for a safe alternative to relieve their coughing, sniffling, sneezing, aches, and pains.

ABC, CNN and others have reported on the dangers of cold medicines for children.  This is how we combat a cold.

1. Use a vaporizer along with Vicks Vapor Rub has helped immensely.
2. Eating healthy gives our bodies a fighting chance against viruses and bacterias.
3. Take a good mult-vitamin to provide any nutrients our diet has missed. We take Usana nutritionals.
4. Propping our older kids up with pillows while sleeping to keep congestion from clogging their nasal passages.
5. Keeping the house stocked with plenty of kleenex. A drippy runny nose is actually our bodies way of taking away impurities. You can aid this by using a netti pot or saline spray for younger kids.

But how can we relieve their achiness? What about a head ache from sinus build up? What can we do?

This is an issue I have not yet resolved. I was happy giving them some Tylenol until a friend told me the dangers of giving Tylenol when related to childhood immunizations.  Tylenol works to keep your bodies temperature down to normal when you are battling a disease or cold. But the problem is our bodies raise our temperatures so it can kill the virus.  When we supress the immune system by lowering our bodies temperature we are actually aiding the virus or bacteria.  We are helping them to win the fight. In other words we are prolonging our child’s cold.

I don’t want my child to suffer one moment longer than they have to with a cold. I don’t want them to suffer having the cold either. My best solution so far is to pretreat them before a cold by boosting their immune system every chance I can. During a cold I can naturally relieve all symptoms but the aches and pains are trickier. They have less aches and pains with less nasal congestion so that goes back to a symptom but when all else fails I go back to Tylenol but I give half doses. I will let you know that a bottle of Tylenol expires in our house before we use it and we have three preschoolers.

I am not a doctor so please always follow your medical professional’s advice while using your common sense.