How to cure a kid’s cold in 3 days—naturally (nothing weird—you probably have all this stuff in your kitchen cabinets!)
I avoid giving my kids antibiotics like the plague, so it’s important to me to nip cold symptoms in the bud before they blossom into bronchitis or a sinus infection. My 14-year-old son has not had antibiotics since he was four (when I started seriously researching natural health and wellness) and my 12-year-old daughter has only had antibiotics once, when she was a toddler.
These are all of the natural remedies I use to help cure a cold in my family. My kids rarely get colds, and if one does get a cold, I’m usually able to keep it from spreading to everyone in the house. I use every method on this list at the first sign of a cold, and most of my son’s or daughter’s cold symptoms clear up within 3 days. The sniffles and congestion might hang on for a few days more, but they don’t feel sick at all after 3 days.
These are completely natural cold remedies, with the exceptions of Claritin (I give that daily during a cold until symptoms clear) and ibuprofen (I dose that sparingly or not at all). All of the items should be in your kitchen cabinet, or Amazon can drop them on your doorstep within 2 days.
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Cure a Cold Fast Idea List on Amazon – find all these items in one spot on Amazon.
None of these tips are weird or gross—if taking spoonfuls of cod liver oil and eating actual liver helps kids get better faster, I’ll take the extra sick day, thanks (and avoid adding vomiting to the mix).
To state the obvious, seek medical attention when necessary.
Food Rules That Help Cure My Child’s Cold Quickly
No sugar. <That’s a period. No sugar, period.
This is really hard because sugar makes kids happy, and when my child is sick and has a low appetite, it’s so tempting to offer foods I know he loves to cheer him up—and get him to eat something. But giving a kid sugar when he has a cold is like giving him water when he’s throwing up: it always ends badly.
Sugar is the devil. When I’m trying to heal, why give what hurts?
I avoid these natural sugars as well when one of my kids has a cold: whole fruit smoothies, juice, and homemade popsicles. Real vitamin C is awesome, but there’s a lot more vitamin C in broccoli and sweet red peppers than in orange juice.
- If you do want to use a cold treat to soothe a sore throat, this is my recipe for Homemade Vitamin C Popsicles.
We also limit unhealthy foods for the rest of the family in solidarity with the sickie (and to help everyone’s immune systems stay in top shape to ward against getting infected by said sickie).
No dairy.
Cow’s milk increases phlegm and congestion. I don’t know if that’s a medical fact, but it’s certainly true for my kiddos and for me (nobody has a dairy issue).
No processed food.
I can’t shovel chemicals into my kiddo and expect her body to heal.
Serve buckets of bone broth. (AKA chicken soup)
I give everyone lots of homemade bone broth made from pastured and/or organic chicken bones. I store bone broth in my freezer, but if you don’t have bone broth on hand, roast a chicken in the oven and the drippings will be gelatin. Use that gelatin the first day, thinned with hot water with lots of Himalayan pink salt added, pick the chicken, and toss the chicken bones in the crockpot with some water and a little vinegar and brew overnight on low. Voila: bone broth.
Voila will come a whole lot faster now that I have an Instant Pot!
- Costco sells organic whole chickens for $2 per pound.
- Winco sells Himalayan pink salt for $1.30 per pound in the bulk section. If you don’t have a Winco nearby, get Himalayan pink salt on Amazon.
Serve tons of raw garlic!
A really easy way I get lots of raw garlic into my kids is to mix it into pasta. If one of my kids wakes up feeling a cold coming on, dinner that night will be pasta tossed with 2 heads of minced garlic, chicken bone broth, olive oil, and fresh parsley. We squeeze lots of lemon over the garlic pasta too for a little extra Vitamin C!
- I buy organic spaghetti at Costco for a dollar a pound.
- If you don’t have a Costco nearby, American Beauty and Barilla pastas are Non-GMO!
- If I can get to the store when one of the kids has a cold, I buy organic garlic for $1.50 for 3 heads at Winco, or $2 for 2 heads at Fry’s. Otherwise, we always have a Costco-sized bag of conventional garlic on hand.
- I generally limit wheat and other grains when one of the kids gets a cold, but pasta is comfort food in our house, and it’s a fabulous vehicle for garlic.
- Wheat free, grain free option: homemade soups like minestrone and pasta e fagioli (without the pasta!) taste great loaded with raw garlic. Chicken no-noodle soup, not so much.
Honey and real cinnamon as a natural cough suppressant
I found this concoction on Pinterest years ago and it really works. Mix raw, local honey with real cinnamon and use it instead of cough syrup. It keeps my kids from coughing all night when they have a cold.
- We use this ceylon cinnamon. I don’t know how much different it is from typical (cassia) cinnamon, but I bought a pound of ceylon cinnamon a year ago, so we use that!
- If raw honey isn’t available, any old honey (even if it includes undisclosed corn syrup) is probably still healthier than cough syrup.
Water, water, and more water to cure a kid’s cold
Water
Water seems to help thin mucus so my kids’ throats don’t get so sore from drainage, and it obviously helps them stay hydrated.
Hot salt water
It’s gross and they hate it, but I have my kids gargle with hot salt water (I use Himalayan pink salt but I’ve used table salt in a pinch on vacation and it worked fine.) It helps soothe their throats and makes them less stuffy.
Hot tea
Just regular old black tea. Hot tea soothes their throats and helps get a little more water into them.
- We buy Newman’s organic tea in bulk from Amazon twice a year (500 teabags but it’s way cheaper than buying organic tea at the grocery store!) My son drinks it straight and my daughter likes hers with honey.
Vitamins and Supplements to Cure a Child’s Cold (and two medications)
Vitamin C
Vitamin C helps my kids get over a cold quickly. I don’t give them regular ascorbic acid anymore (that’s the form of Vitamin C most people have on hand) but ascorbic acid will work if that’s what’s available. The best way to get lots of Vitamin C into a sick kid is to offer tons of vegetables and whole fruit rich in Vitamin C, but my kids don’t usually feel like eating much when they have a cold.
- I give my kids 1000–2000 mg of a natural Vitamin C supplement multiple times a day when they have a cold.
- I don’t give them more than 2,000 milligrams at a time because too much Vitamin C given at one time can cause diarrhea, and I have enough to deal with curing a cold!
- This is the Vitamin C we use: Vitamin C Powder, L Ascorbic Acid, Non GMO. It seems expensive, but it works out to 10 cents per 1000 mg (1/2 tsp of the powder) when the price is $45 (the price changes often on Amazon). I mix it into water. It tastes sour, like no-sugar lemonade.
- I megadose myself and my husband with vitamin C (at least 5,000 mg a dose, several times a day) because ain’t no mom got time to be sick, and the only thing worse to deal with than a sick kid is a sick husband.
Give Probiotics to Everyone
Health starts in the gut. Everyone in our family takes one of these easy-to-swallow probiotics every day, in sickness and in health. We also use these strawberry flavored chewable acidophilus wafers as needed for upset stomachs and queasiness.
I put all of the natural cold remedies mentioned in this post in this Amazon Wishlist so you can pick and choose what you need:
Claritin
Claritin is one of only two drugs I give my kids (ibuprofen is the second, and I guess the caffeine in the tea technically makes it three drugs). Claritin helps dry out their sinuses without any side effects, and if they wake up the next morning feeling great, I just thank God, and I don’t worry too much about whether they just had seasonal allergies or we quickly knocked out a developing cold.
- I buy the generic Claritin (loratadine) at Costco; a bottle lasts us several years. Evidently the expiration date is just a suggestion since it still works fine.
Ibuprofen
I avoid giving my kids ibuprofen when I’m trying to cure a cold, even if they’re running a fever. I believe a fever is the body’s way of healing, so unless they’re truly miserable and I’ve given them everything else listed above, no ibuprofen.
How I keep the cold from infecting the rest of the family (or reinfecting Patient Zero)
Sanitize all of the toothbrushes daily
A toothbrush harbors and breeds germs. Our toothbrushes are not stored together, they are stored away from the spray of the toilet (that’s inside a drawer or cabinet), and each person has his own tube of toothpaste.
- I soak each person’s toothbrush in a cup with peroxide daily, and wipe down the toothpaste tubes and openings with peroxide.
- After the cold has passed, I replace the sick kid’s toothpaste.
Wash all of the sheets.
I wash everyone’s sheets the morning anyone in the family wakes up with cold symptoms. I keep the kid with the cold off of everyone else’s bed after that, and wash his sheets again once he’s well.
Sanitize all the things!
I use activated peroxide (AKA accelerated peroxide) or Clorox wipes to disinfect all of the light switches, door handles, remote controls, and anything else my kid touched in the 3 days before his cold symptoms started. We have leather furniture, and I wipe it down with Clorox peroxide spray every time the sick kid sits on it. I sanitize everything at least once a day.
- This activated peroxide disinfectant spray can be sprayed directly on fabrics, which is great for hard to wash items like upholstered furniture and comforters.
Use a humidifier to ease cold congestion for kids
Last but not least, I run a warm mist humidifier in my kiddo’s bedroom at night when I’m curing his cold. I also move the humidifier to the living room during the day when he’s lying on the couch watching Netflix.
We live in Phoenix where the air is super dry year round, and the humidifier really seems to help ease nighttime congestion. I bought and broke three humidifiers by running them dry until I found this humidifier that doesn’t break even when it runs out of water!
I used to put thieves oil in the top of the humidifier, but I’m not certain that makes much of a difference. Many moms swear by essential oils, but I haven’t noticed any benefit for my family after trying out multiple essential oils for various health purposes. I’m sure using essential oils with the humidifier can’t hurt.
Related:
Vitamin C Popsicles Recipe: Kiwi-Strawberry Lemonade Popsicles to Heal a Summer Cold!
How to Fit Bone Broth in Your Freezer! How to Freeze Bone Broth/Chicken Broth
When Should Kids Wash Their Hands? 10 Handwashing Tips for Kids in the Kitchen!
Those are all the natural remedies I use to cure my child’s cold within 3 days or less! If I notice one of my kids is stuffy and follow the protocol listed above (except ibuprofen), she often feels 100% better by the next morning, and her cold simply goes away. This is particularly important since we travel at least once a month, and no kid wants to be sick at Disneyland!
I put all of the natural cold remedies mentioned in this post in this Amazon Wishlist so you can pick and choose what you need:
Cure a Cold Fast Amazon Idea List”
