Your childhood illness cheat sheet

Coughs, colds and other minor illnesses are an inevitable part of childhood. But Dr Sarah Myhill has a handy guide for treating them naturally and improving the immune defenses.

Sooner or later your child will get an acute febrile (feverish) illness, cough or cold. Welcome this—coughs, colds and fevers are a desirable and essential part of training the immune system—but first be prepared with what I call ‘Groundhog’ regimes.

Because I constantly refer in my practice to the same approach, which I believe is fundamental to the treatment of all infections, and by inference to the avoidance of the major killers (cancer, heart disease, dementia), which are all driven by chronic infection, I call it Groundhog. In the film Groundhog Day, the protagonist is caught in a time loop where the same day is repeated again and again until there is a shift in his understanding. My Groundhog regimes represent another sort of loop that bears constant repetition. Groundhog done well will do much to prevent acute illness from developing and chronic disease getting a foothold.

For everyone, including children, I recommend ‘Groundhog Basic’ all or most of the time. This involves eating a paleo-ketogenic (PK) diet (high fat, high fiber, very low carb, no dairy or grains), a basic package of nutritional supplements including multivitamins and minerals along with vitamin C, and getting enough sleep, exercise and sunshine.

At the first sign of any infection, it’s vital to immediately put in place ‘Groundhog Acute’ (see page 62). Do not forget the wise advice of Dr Fred Klenner: “The patient should get large doses of vitamin C in all pathological conditions while the physician ponders the diagnosis.” Strike soon and strike hard because time is of the essence. 

Make sure you’re stocked up with the essentials for Groundhog Acute—that is, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), Lugol’s 12% or 15% iodine and coconut oil. Kick out the acetaminophen (paracetamol), aspirin, ibuprofen and cough syrups. 

Here’s my guide to treating minor and common childhood ailments using Groundhog Acute and other methods. The principles of treating these are three-fold: 1) improve the immune defenses, 2) minimize the loading dose of an infection, and 3)  give the immune system the weapons to fight with.

How to treat common problems in children

Michelle’s top PK recipes

Artist and mother of two Michelle McCullagh has been putting Dr Myhill’s protocols into practice for several years. Here are some of her favorite recipes, for those without the time, energy or inclination to cook more than the minimum. 

Linseed mash 

This is a great PK option for breakfast

Ingredients

¼ cup ground linseed  

1 cup coconut cream 

1 Tbsp kefir 

1 tsp hemp oil 

Desert spoon of stewed blackcurrants/plums/rhubarb/fruit of choice 

Directions

1. Mix all the ingredients apart from the fruit together 
2. Allow to soak for 5 minutes as it thickens. Warm up if it’s a cold morning, then eat with the fruit. 

Seed balls 

These can be eaten straight from the freezer as a delicious snack. 

Ingredients

1 large Tbsp coconut oil 

1 large Tbsp ghee 

Sunshine salt 

¼ cup mixed seeds 

¼ cup nuts of choice 

Directions

1. Melt the coconut oil and ghee together in a saucepan and add a healthy sprinkling of Sunshine salt OR salt. 
2. Grind a similar amount of seeds and nuts in a Nutri-bullet and add to the melted fats. 
3. Let the mixture go semi-cold so that you can form it into balls. 
4. Drop these into mini-cake casings and pop into the freezer OR
5. Pour the mixture into a square container lined with baking paper and pop into the fridge. 
6. Once cold and fully set, cut into small squares and freeze. 

Bone broth 

I have a hot pot that is constantly on the go. A slow cooker works as well. Into the hot pot go all bones, trotters, water in which vegetables have been boiled, bacon rinds, and any meal leftovers. I ladle out the liquid as required for drinks, soups and stews. Every two or three days I take out all the fluid and store this in the fridge, chuck the remains to the chickens and start again. There is no food waste in the PK kitchen. Also see www.ohbabynutrition.com/blog/bone-broth-for-babies. 

Groundhog Acute 

Putting it into practice

Michelle McCullagh shares her experience using two of Dr Myhill’s top recommendations, vitamin C and iodine, with her two daughters, Bobby and Etta, three years and 20 months old at the time of writing.

VITAMIN C

On realizing the importance of vitamin C in our bodies, it has become part of our daily routine. I have a pint glass of warm water first thing in the morning with a teaspoon of ascorbic acid diluted in it. I use a straw to protect my teeth from the acidity. I drink on average another two or three glasses of the same throughout the day. 

I drank a lot of this mix throughout pregnancy, often 3–4 teaspoons daily (20 g or 20,000 mg), particularly near the end with Etta. During those winter months there were so many snotty colds going around in Bobby’s playgroups. Etta was certainly getting plenty of vitamin C through my pregnancy and while breastfeeding her. 

As soon as the girls were on water in their sippy cups, they were having vitamin C in it at half my strength (2½ g or ½ tsp in a liter of water). It came everywhere with us. 

Bobby went through a stage of quite definitely saying, “Mummy, no vit C!” as I mixed her water. One morning she woke up with a runny nose. She did not like the snot and kept wiping it away with a piece of tissue. I told her all about how vitamin C will sort this out: “Some C-drink a day keeps the snotties away.” 

It worked, and she has been keen for C ever since. 

This was reinforced when Bobby was given a book for Christmas: Buttercup, Me and Vitamin C. It’s about a boy and his cow, Buttercup. He discovers that she can make her own vitamin C and must do so to remain healthy. Bobby really understands it now and says she, too, wants to be as well as Buttercup. Now she asks for her health drink and makes sure her little sister is in receipt of the same. 

Both the girls now have vitamin C in every cup of water. This is too weak to damage their teeth. Of course, the greatest damage to teeth comes from sugars. 

IODINE

Way before Covid was ever mentioned, when I used to take Bobby to playgroups, I would always have a pot of iodine oil in the car. This is made up of 10 parts coconut oil mixed with one part Lugol’s 15% iodine. 

I would put this on hands and face, and slightly up her nose. During the winter months when snot was streaming from kiddies’ noses and being spread on just about everything they touched, I would bring Bobby in with a yellow tinge to the end of her nose and hands, because we were doing our best to get a milder dose of the snots. 

Of course, she did get coughs and colds, but I always felt they weren’t half as bad as most others’ and her body dealt with them so well. They never once kept her up at night. 

During the Covid pandemic when I had to take the girls to the shops with me, before getting out of the car I would smother us all, hands, forearms, faces and noses, and off we would go. 

Adapted from Green Mother: Families Fit for the Future, by Dr Sarah Myhill, Michelle McCullagh and Craig Robinson (editor), Hammersmith Health Books, 2022

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