Health Tip: Take a Tincture

It's an unfortunate fact that when you travel, you're more susceptible to getting sick. Whether you're flying, taking the train, or even taking a road trip, your diet changes, you're around more people (often in confined spaces, and your body is stressed. We've found one surefire way to keep those nasty colds at bay when we're far from home...a tonic or tincture.

Our go-to tonic (which can be found at any health food store, including Whole Foods) is Herb Pharm's Immune Defense Tonic. Combining echinacea with several other herbal remedies, such as astralagus, and reishi it's an easy way to keep your compromised immune system strong. We start taking it the week before we go on a trip, take it religiously while in transit and depending on how we're feeling, we'll continue to take on the trip as we see fit. We've been doing this for a year now, and it's been largely successful in helping us stay well after trips, even ones with lots of flying.

A tincture is distillation of herbs in alcohol and Dr. Weil explains them well in 8 Weeks to Optimum Health (from on Amazon or the library). Of if you want to try your hand at making one yourself, this episode of Decor it Yourself shows you just how easy it is. (Warning, there's a cheesy musical parody at the beginning, if it's not your thing, just jump to 0:15 to skip it.)