Let’s take a microbe quiz. If you have a susceptibility to allergies, viruses, or infections, take this quiz and tally up how many “Yes”s you have to these questions.

• Fatigue
• Headaches
• Neck or back pain.
• Digestive disturbances like constipation, diarrhea, bloating, or gas
• Numbness in the hands & arms and/or feet & legs
• Rheumatoid or psoriatic arthritis
• Hives/skin rashes
• Ulcerative colitis
• Weight issues
• Eczema
• Heart palpitations
• Sinus congestion
• Mood swings
• Difficulty sleeping
• Depression/anxiety
• Asthma
• Coughing
• Sore throat

You could group those last three—asthma, coughing, sore throat, allergy-related issues—together.

How many did you get when you totaled those up and gave yourself a “yes” for each of those that applied?

If you’re in the 0-to-5 range, I’m not as concerned.

It could be microbes, mineral deficiencies, or a lot of other things that could be driving these symptoms.

If you answered “Yes” to 5-10 of these, then we should be concerned that there’s a microbe imbalance in your body, whether it’s a yeast, a virus, or an allergen.

If you’re over 10, we’ve really got to dive into this thing, and I’m going to give you a wellness cabinet of what you can use to clear these out and strengthen your system.

I think we develop a lot of these over-sensitivities when our bodies just can’t handle any more.

There are genetic predispositions to some conditions, but your body may just be malfunctioning due to the accumulation of these stressors and invaders.

The results of a poor lifestyle all start to add up, and the body can’t take it anymore.

It’s like a bucket, and once it overflows, these microbes show up as hives and arthritis and all of these other conditions.

Now, there are three approaches for dealing with these issues.

Focus On The Problem

First, you can avoid the things that actually create the problem in the first place.

A lot of people spend a lot of time, energy, and money on getting expensive allergy tests.

You can run out and get these, and get food sensitivity tests, but it’s normally not the place I recommend to start.

For one thing, that test is limited to testing food in general, not the exact type or brand of food that you’re eating.

Before you jump into testing, you should clean your lifestyle up first, and understand clean, good nutrition.

If you still have to test, do that, but learning about nutrition and eating clean foods first could save you a lot of money.

However, if you do want to test the specific foods you’re eating at home, you could get a finger pulse oximeter.

You use that to measure your pulse, and you simply put the food into your mouth and see if there’s a jump in your pulse rate.

If there’s a jump for or movement in either direction, that might very well be a food you’re sensitive to.

This isn’t a diagnostic, but it can give you an understanding of what the food that’s in your cupboard actually does when you put it in your mouth.

Now, this is not the best way to test for skin allergies, but this does test the food side of things.

Strengthen the Immune System

Now, the second approach to these problems is what I’m trying to prevent you from having to do, and that’s using drugs, pills, or injections.

A lot of those can cause drowsiness, fatigue, dizziness, coordination issues, headaches, loss of appetite, blurred vision, and upset stomach.

Those symptoms might be coming from just using things like Benadryl.

These medications have a lot of regulations around them because they can be very harmful on the body, especially if inappropriately used long-term.

They’re really hard on your kidneys and your liver.

So what can we do instead?

We can strengthen your body’s ability to respond to and resist allergens and microbes that come into the system.

Nassau University Medical Center showed that when an allergen enters the body, the immune system reacts just like if it was a bacteria.

That in turn notifies the brain to secrete hormones to respond to the allergen.

What we want to do is give the body the raw materials and helpers it needs so that it can respond more effectively.

That way, your body has a memory of things that it needs to fend off, but doesn’t have such extreme responses where you get all rashy, broken out, or inflamed.

Now, these are the steps that I take with my family and myself when we’re having what we suspect to be a microbe-related response in the body.

Quercetin and Vitamin C

If you do suffer from springtime allergies, year-round allergies, or maybe even cat allergies, quercetin and vitamin C are some of my favorites and make a significant impact on the system.

Vitamin C is going to bolster your immune system.

Quercetin is a powerhouse against viruses, but it’s also very effective in high doses for fending off allergy-related attacks.

If your skin is flared up or if you ate something that made you flare up, quercetin is a really good way to respond quickly.

Taking quercetin along with nettles is a very good antihistamine one-two punch.

A combination of quercetin and nettles is something I keep on hand to use if I do have an allergy-related response like sneezing or rashes, or a reaction to something I ate.

Please get medical attention and advice if it’s a significant response.

But for your everyday allergy-related issues with the skin, nose, sinuses, or cough, quercetin and some high-dose vitamin C work very well.

Now, for dosages, I recommend 200 to 400 milligrams of quercetin for a flare-up.

With the nettles, a couple hundred milligrams is good.

With vitamin C, I go anywhere from 500 to 3000 mg.

Too much vitamin C can make the stools soft and loose, but it’s very good for boosting the immune system.

Avoid Sugars

Now, lifestyle-wise, you should avoid sugars, alcohol, and dairy if you are dealing with coughing, sinus issues, a viral infection, or allergies,

We want to get dairy out because it’s going to make more phlegm and cause more sinus issues.

It’s also going to challenge the lungs, so remove it.

Sugar is going to push the immune system in the wrong direction by feeding inflammation.

If you’re having an inflammatory flare-up, you’ve got to avoid sugar.

Alcohol is also going to make that problem worse.

Any time you’re rundown or inflamed, or having an allergic response, those three have got to go.

Probiotics + Vitamin D

Number three, keep a high quality probiotic in your regimen.

I believe that vitamin D should be taken every single day anyway, or you should be getting sunlight.

But a quality probiotic helps balance your system back out, especially if you’ve had a stomach virus or some medical testing, like a colonoscopy.

This is a good one to balance out the bad bacteria inside of your system.

If you’ve had a lot of stomach-related issues, digestive-related issues, add in a quality pre- pro- and post-biotic.

Probiotics help to bolster the immune system; they’re the friendly bacteria that balance out the gut.

Prebiotics feed that good bacteria, and postbiotics are what that bacteria produces that helps out your immune system.

All three of those should be taken together. There is a link here to show you one that I keep in my fridge for my kids and for myself.

If we’re kind of rundown, snotty, suspect bacteria, have an ear infection, or anything else like that, we take those.

We also throw in those probiotics any time we have digestive distress.

They’re also really good for candida. If you have an imbalance and you suspect yeast, get probiotics.

Raw Local Honey

Next, let’s go to raw local honey. This is a great one to add to tea.

If the honey is local to your region, then you’re also getting the antihistamine, anti-allergen benefits of it.

This is a good one for scratchy throats, coughs, and allergy-related issues.

Adding anywhere from a teaspoon to a tablespoon of honey to some tea once a day is fantastic.

Silver Serum

In our silver serum, we have a colloidal silver that is implanted into the structure of water so that it doesn’t fall out of solution.

There’s no risk to using it; silver’s not piling up in the body.

It’s a patented formula, and it’s a very good natural antimicrobial.

My family uses this all the time for snotty noses, coughs, rashes on the skin, any kind of suspected bacterial infection, shingles, a sty in the eye, and other things of that nature..

We can put it right in the eye, ears, or mouth with a spray.

Tea tree oil is another good one to put on the skin if you have a skin reaction, whether it’s allergen-related or microbe-related.

Just make sure that it doesn’t irritate your skin first.

Oregano + Monolaurin

I combined oregano and monolaurin in one product because I use them together.

Oregano has very good antifungal, antiviral, and antimicrobial effects.

The actual oil form tastes very unpleasant, so I take it in a capsule form.

I like to pair that with monolaurin, which is one of my favorites.

If you are struggling with Epstein-Barr, a virus, shingles, warts, or any other viral issue, this is a great one to be taking on a daily basis to bolster the immune system.

If you’re flying on an airplane or around a lot of sick people, monolaurin is a good one to add in.

I take a gram of monolaurin each day during periods of sickness.

The amount of oregano you take may vary, but just take what’s recommended on the bottle.

Summary

So that’s what I keep in my family’s wellness cabinet.

You can get a lot of these from foods.

You can get probiotics from sauerkraut or other fermented foods, take actual oil of oregano, or eat raw local honey.

But I always keep the wellness cabinet stocked because I don’t want to have to rely on Benadryl and over-the-counter cold medications like I did when I was a kid.

I now believe there’s a better way, which is to take these things that help strengthen immunity.

These things help give you the raw materials so the army inside of you can defend against invaders.

If you do suspect microbes, parasites, or imbalances of candida or bacteria in your body and you feel like you need to cleanse that out, I have a microbe cleanse that you could try out to detox the system.