Hi Frickly.
I'm going to give this a shot in explaining what works for me and my swollen lymphs but just a warning - it might not all make sense tonight. I've had to completely stop all supplements in preparation of some testing starting tomorrow and going through to next tuesday so I might not make all the sense I think I am.
Ok!
First, pop some echinachea and astragulus root. (spelling might not be right) I take the recommened dosage on the bottle and use the nature's way brand. I think its like two caps a couple times a day of each. As long as you start them by dinner time, make sure to get in two doses of each that day. If you start earlier then you can probably fit in a third dose, i'd go with 4 hours apart minimum and should be fine. Just stick to total listed in a day on the bottle.
Next, if you have some zinc around or can get some - take about 15mg is what I supplement when getting ill in addition to what's in my multivitamin. I use Optizinc becaue it comes with copper too so that you don't have to worry about the zinc pulling the copper out of your system. This is a good immune booster.
Victoria nailed it with the Vitamin C. 1000 mg every 30 min can titrate you up pretty fast. you can also do it every hour instead. During the spring when I have massive allergies, I end up taking easily 18k mgs in a day at least so don't let the amount freak you out too much. I find it works incredibly better if you have a powdered form to take instead of tablet. I'll often pop capsules open to do this. Make sure to rinse your mouth well afterward due to the acidity. If you start getting nauseous then you will want to slow down to Vit C every couple hours. I find the nausea is a precursor to being full up on Vit C and you know you've had to much if you get the runs. Which sucks because then you still have all this Vit C in you that can keep you running for a hour or two until it is lowered in you. But never had that problem if I backed off when I started getting nauseous. Also, keep drinking water with this much C.
Acidolphulus. (sp is all wrong, sorry) My doc said to take a handful when feeling some bug coming on. It out competes the bug for room in your mucus membrane areas - nasal, lungs, etc and if taken early enough can make a huge difference with the zinc and C. I tend to take about 6-8x's of what I normally would take in a day - twice in the first day.
If you don't feel like you have a bug (can't remember) but just have the swollen lymphs, go for the echinacea and the astragulus - they seem to help clear it a bit.
Biggest help I've found this last month when I was having problems - about a 20-30 minute gentle walk. I take a walking stick so that it helps my balance and the movement with it in my hand keeps that hand from swelling on me. Swap hands and I'm all good.
But this has done the most relief right away that lasted the longest. Some gentle stretching of my shoulders and neck afterward when I'm warmed up from the walk make it help that much better. Stretch with shoulder rolls, go towards front then reverse and go towards back. Then windmill your arms in a slow fashion forwards and backwards. Neck is first head forwards, backwards. Then tilt it left, tilt it right. Then look over your shoulder left, look over your shoulder right. Then do a half circle neck roll from head tilt towards left and roll it down in front of you and back up to the other side. Reverse and repeat. All of these I do five reps each and don't strain in any movement, just do what feels good only.
EFT. Not entirely sure about this because in me it tends to stimulate detox and can swell my glands, but things do seem to keep moving pretty well at that point and is worth a shot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i33V2EcVlY&feature=channel_page This link takes you to Magnus, a dude teaching EFT basics. He's cool because he has you do it along with him and pauses for you to say it so you don't have to speak over him. After you get the hang of EFT you can shorten this up, but for a quick starter this can get you going. One thing though, he forgets this part. Ok, say you are angry at your cat for whatever reason. The first round of tapping you say "Even though feel angry at the cat, I deeply and completely respect myself." What he forgets on this video is that after that, when you tap on the exact same memory/emotion you say "Even though I have remaining anger, I deeply and completely respect myself." Its the Remaining part that is important.
So for example. He has you saying "This Feeling" (you can say this feeling or insert anger, just keep the feeling in your thoughts for sure) then later you would say "This Remaining Feeling." Sorry if this is all a little confusing, it makes sense the more you do it.
One reason I liked his stuff. It was easy to do, easy to learn and his version seemed to work about as well as most.
You could focus on "Even though I have this ache" or "Even though there is swelling in my lymphs." Things like that could direct your energies to address that spot. Personally, I haven't had a lot of help with the physical healing part of this yet though. hehe If there is something bothering you though, maybe something someone did recently or a past thing that keeps popping into your head, try working on that. Might be that it is locking you up some and making your system not work right. And follow where the EFT takes you. By that I mean, I'll start out with something that seems like it only bugs me a bit and just happened that day. Then next the thought pops in my head that it might also have X other feeling involved. so I tap on that one. Then as that doesn't bug me I realize that maybe it's from this other thing that happened 10 years ago and tap on that emotion. Sort of like peeling back the layers of what the actual problem is.
Anyways, that's how I go about EFT.
I'm sure a practitioner of it would be much quicker at finding the root cause of things, but I'm learning as I go and it seems that often times I just can't see the root cause because everything else is obscuring it. And be ready for it to take some time. Start with Magnus' 20 min video. Rewind it and repeat if you need to. And if you start feeling overly drained (tired) or like you're system has a buzz going on in it, that's a good time to be done even if you don't seem to have gotten everything you wanted to tap. I find that if I ignore those warning signs, I get major detox and don't feel well at all for the rest of the day. Also, try not to do too big of a thing bugging you till you get the hang of it pretty good. And allow a lot of time when you do try to tap something major, there can be a lot of extra tapping as you follow all the roots of the problem. Last, I tend to be a bit more emotional for a day or two if I tap something really big. Small stuff, just makes me feel a lot better. Really relaxes me.
I've probably lost you some where in all this, but keep coming back to it later and it might make more sense after you've done a little EFT yourself.
But remember! Echanacea and astragulus! They help tons.
Lisa
nearly forgot. Rinse your nostrils with a saline/baking soda solution. Jody has mention a turkey baster for this, never tried that but you can also get this plastic bottle thing from almost any drug store. Some even come with premade salt packs if you are so inclined. There are also neti pots you can pick up too. I make my own solution. What works for me is 1.5 tsp salt (non idiozed. I use sea salt) and .25 tsp baking soda. Can adjust the baking soda based on if the solution burns. If it burns tooo much add more soda. Use water that feels comfortably warm on you inner wrist. The above amounts are for about 20oz water.
I find this relieves some of the burden on my lymphs somehow.
