As we are rolling into fall and spending more time inside. It is important to support your immune system by eating a colorful plate without add sugars.  Those sugars are inflammatory to the immune system and with fall allergies, colds, viruses and COVID going around there is no need to inflame the body more than necessary.

Help support your body by eating the colorful fall fruits and vegetables like:

• Beets
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Collards
• Kale
• Kohlrabi
• Mustard
• Onions
• Peas
• Radishes
• Rutabagas
• Turnips
• Potatoes
• Apples
• Figs
• Cantaloupes
• Cucumbers
• Zucchini
• Watermelon
• Pears
• Nectarines
• Garlic 

Above are just a few ideas. I would love to hear your favorite vegetable or fruit to have in the fall. 

Using the fresh garlic, ginger and horseradish you can make a fire cider to help support your gut which in turns will help support your immune system.  Try out the recipe below. I love a good shot of fire cider in the morning or sometimes in the late afternoon. You can also enjoy it in a variety of recipes, even mocktails. 

Ingredients: 

• 1 medium white or yellow onion
• 4-5 cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped
• 4 TBSP of freshly grated ginger root
• 3-4 TBSp of freshly grated horseradish root
• fermented apple cider vinegar (cloudy with the mother)
• honey
• cayenne pepper

Preparation:

• combine the onion, garlic, ginger and horseradish in a wide mouth glass quart jar.
• fill the jar with warm apple cider vinegar, enough to cover the herbs.
• place jar in a warm spot in your house, 
• strain; then discard the spent herbs. Add honey and cayenne to taste, this is where you can make the recipe more or less kid friendly, The finished product should be spicy, sweet with a bit of a kick. 

​Additional ways to use Fire Cider
​
You can use the Fire Cider to make a vinaigrette, 
Add a tablespoon to your smoothie
Add a couple of tablespoons to soups or curries
a dash to your herbal tea or in a mocktail

Tomorrow, October 9th, is the annual PANDAS/PANS awareness day. I really think we need more than a day of awareness, a month would be really nice. So many children are shuttled into programs or medications that do not get at the root cause of why they are having symptoms of anxiety, OCD, irritability, restrictive eating, anger and more. Young children, 1st grade get arrested for behavior they don't have control over. Their little brains are on fire and they can not think. When my daughter was young, she would have 45+ minute temper tantrums. No amount of redirection helped. Not even bargaining helped. She would just rage and rage on until she exhausted herself. She had social anxiety so much that when she was evaluated for a special needs program for preschoolers, she hide herself under my chair. Visibly afraid of the evaluator who was being so gentle, offering various toys to encourage her to come out. We tried play therapy only helped minimally. Occupational therapy helped with the sound sensitivities however there was so much more going on. 

Eventually we found a helpful chiropractor who started her on the path towards healing. She helped us uncover our daughters food allergies that was making it hard for her to think. Hello gluten! Did you know gluten allergy can cause a multitude of symptoms beside GI troubles. Gluten allergy can cause acne, headaches, migraines, joint pain, numbness, hyperactivity, weight-loss, bloating, gas, itchy skin, rashes, anemia, depression just to name a few.  However it wasn't just gluten that was her problem. I eventually deduced she had PANDAS, but I needed to find a practitioner to treat her. Thankfully our chiropractor found a functional neurologist who helped us get to the root cause of what was going on inside her.  My daughters body was still battling the streptococcus infection she had at age 2, the mycoplasma pneumonia infection she picked up someplace and a raging case of candida from the all the antibiotics I had in my last trimester, during labor and the dose they gave her a 6 weeks due to some mystery illness they felt was best to treat with an antibiotic versus finding out why she had a high fever.  The end result was her body was on fire from the gluten allergy, which for her is actually celiac, and fighting all those infections. Once we treated the infections, removed stressors like us fostering children. She began to thrive. 

 is going on for yourself or your child? I can help. I've been trained as a Function Nutrition Coach, to help you discover what is going on inside.  If you have been treating your symptoms with medications for months or years and it hasn't improved. Consider functional nutrition coaching. Schedule a FREE 15 minute strategy session.