Colds & Flu Cheat Sheet – Natural Remedies

Today, I have a printable quick reference sheet (“cheat sheet”) for you to save for the next time a cold or flu strikes your house!

Plus even more natural cold and flu remedy recipes and tips below!

A couple of weeks ago, our family came down with co-vid, and the intense brain fog and fatigue made it harder to remember my favorite simple remedies for sore throat, cough, and stuffy sinuses.

We’re all better now, so I decided to make us up a cheat sheet, to more easily refer to my quickest and easiest-to-make remedies. It’s now taped inside my herbal medicine cabinet, for fast reference when needed!

Note that this list is specific to my family’s favorite quick remedies for cold & flu, a couple which overlap Stephen Buhner’s herbal recommendations for c.vid. Your family might respond better to different remedies, but I’m still sharing it in hopes it may be a helpful starting place for some – you may want to type up your own list to hang in your herbal/medicine cabinet. ❤

To grab your Colds & Flu Reference Sheet:

Just click on the thumbnail image above, or HERE, and you’ll be taken directly to the PDF file. From there, you can download and/or print. (Be aware the specific pdf links change when updated, but you’ll always find the most current one linked to on this page – so bookmark, pin, or share this page, not the pdf itself.)

If your browser won’t automatically open pdf files, try using a different browser instead. If you’re on a mobile phone, you may need to grab the adobe reader app. Apple products can use the iBooks app.

Some links on this site are affiliate links. I may earn a small commission if you follow a link & make a purchase.

Tincture sources:

• Mountain Rose Herbs (a large selection of high quality tinctures, also dried herbs)
• Etsy (for harder to find tinctures, such as Japanese Honeysuckle)
• Woodland Essence (especially helpful for followers of Stephen Buhner’s protocols)
• Lemon balm tincture recipe (@ this site)
• Ginger tincture recipe (@ this site)
• My favorite cold & flu tincture recipe (spilanthes + lemon balm + echinacea = works awesome in the throat spray recipe!)

More of my natural cold & flu remedies & articles:

• DIY Herbal Throat Spray
• 14 Ways to Use Ground Ginger
• How to Make Ginger Tincture
• Honey & Lemon Sore Throat Candy Drops
• DIY Herbal Cough Drops
• Sinus & Headache Balm
• 7 Winter Wellness Essential Oil Recipes
• Herbal Jello
• Ginger Lemon Honey Tonic
• Ginger & Lemon Balm Honey Syrup
• Whiskey Rose Cough Remedy
• 7 Remedies & Recipes for Dry Chapped Lips
• Super Healing Cold Sore Lip Balm

A few more winter wellness tips & supplements I use:

• Run a vaporizer with a few drops of eucalyptus essential oil. (Use Plant Therapy’s Sniffle Stopper instead of eucalyptus for kids 2 to 10.) I also add 2 drops of bay leaf essential oil (per Stephen Buhner’s paper on c*vid; but handle with caution – don’t use bay leaf, Laurus nobilis, essential oil topically or use around young children.)
• Zinc lozenges, such as Zicam, can be helpful to take when you feel a cold coming on. Seeking Health & Holistic Heal also have good zinc lozenges.
• We take vitamin D in the winter months to keep our immune system boosted. (We use Seeking Health D3 & K2 drops, plus occasionally their Vitamin A drops, as needed.)
• Other supplements I like to keep on hand include: Ridgecrest Herbals ClearLungs (great for all sorts of coughs); Nature’s Sunshine VS-C (to try to help prevent viruses from taking hold in the first place); Dr. Christopher’s X-INFX (if we feel an infection settling into ears, throat, lungs), GinGin Ginger Drops (very helpful for tummy aches and nausea), Spilanthes Tincture (I talk about this ALL THE TIME for ALL THE THINGS, but that’s because it’s SO GOOD! We buy HerbPharm brand online from Pure Formulas website when I don’t have enough homemade stocked), Sambucol Elderberry Syrup (great for flu & minor colds, but for us personally hasn’t been useful for some of the newer respiratory bugs and c-vid.).
• Something newer we’ve found helpful is Thymosin Alpha 1 (an immunity peptide). The Biostrips were convenient for my needle-phobic family member, if you can find them, but it’s normally injected. (Will eventually share more about our various peptide experiments in the future.)
• Add a few astragalus root slices to simmer in soups, stews, broth as a tonic herb, that helps support your immune system.
• Stay home, stay warm, rest up, and feel better! ❤

If you’re pregnant, nursing, have medical concerns or questions, or feel worse, check with a professional health care provider for personalized advice!