The Role of Family Meals in Health & Well-Being || A Chat with Naomi Murray, Natural Health Expert

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Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Real Life Real Kitchen podcast, which is a little corner of the Internet for mums who are curious to find out more things about family, food and community.

This week I've got the wonderful Naomi Murray, who is a natural health expert of 30 years experience and runs her own corner of not just the Internet, but of the southeast of England called Botanica Health, a beautiful little shop where you can get all kinds of natural support for health vitality.

Naomi also offers various kind of clinics to support people who would like something to complement traditional medicine.

So, Naomi, thank you very much for taking the time to come onto the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's very exciting.

Thank you.

Now, I'd also like to recommend everybody to follow Naomi on Instagram.

It's health, is that correct?

Yep.

And the details are in the show notes because Naomi also does little, little videos that pop up on there, which are just such fantastic resources for.

Yeah, just improving your health and making life a bit easier.

Naomi, my question to you is, how did you get into this?

Why did you not just say, I'm going to be a doctor, become a GP or something of this nature?

How have you stumbled into, yeah, natural health, complementary health, shall we say?

Well, I guess it began before I was even aware of it.

My father at the time was not a herbalist.

He always had a love of plants, though, and natural healing.

And I had whooping cough as a baby and treated me with a herb and some other interesting methods, which was putting Vaseline on the soles of my feet and then some sliced garlic, putting my socks on.

And within half an hour he could smell the garlic off my breath.

Wow.

And recovered with the help of the herbs.

And it's obviously a very frightening illness, but I recovered and I guess that was my first experience of the power of herbs.

At the age of one, my father and mother moved up to the wilds of Scotland.

They were both from very busy London.

My dad wanted to escape from the rat race.

At the age of 45, he started his degree in herbal medicine.

So he was old starting, if you know what I mean.

He's not a young person doing a degree, but he'd had this incredible love and curiosity about the healing power of plants from his early 20s and had had his own experiences of how incredibly healing plants can be.

So growing up in Scotland in the wilds, where it's literally fields and sand dunes and forests, I grew up going out collecting wonderful herbs like eyebright and dandelions and meadowsweet and all Sorts of incredible things.

And I didn't really appreciate at the time how unusual my childhood was.

You always want to be like everybody else and normal.

We weren't really that normal.

And so from the age of around 18, I began working in his very busy herbal clinic, dispensing medicine, making tinctures with him.

I have wonderful memories of staring outside his.

He had a extension on the house which looked over the North Sea, which was further on there beautifully.

And I remember having these lovely moments where we'd be making a very strong tincture of thyme for his time, syrup.

And just looking out this huge window onto the very gray and stormy but incredible North Sea.

It was amazing, the smell of the thyme.

And I was in this quiet space looking out at wildness, basically.

So it was an incredible time of learning through my father, you know, which.

His wisdom, which is continues.

He's 86 now, and we have.

We have generational wisdom because of all the.

Our forefathers were doctors, herbalists and surgeons.

So you've very much got that.

It's the calling.

It's interesting.

I see this in families.

It will be things like.

I came across a chap who threw in his degree, his PhD in neuroscience to become a sourdough baker.

And he later discovered that actually his forefathers, there were like five, six generations of bakers in there.

Wow.

All the people.

I've got this interest in my brother.

I don't know if you'll listen to this.

He should be a butcher.

He loved it.

And on my mother's side of the family, again, four, five, six generation of butchery.

It's.

It's amazing how these lines come through and people have a real calling to it.

Yeah, it's in your bones.

There's a lovely quote I can't quite remember about actually being in your bones as ancestry of a calling.

We didn't have any idea until about two years ago when someone in the family did our family tree.

And going back 250 years, all the men, apart from his own father, who was an accountant.

I know, huge change, but it was incredible.

I've got these lovely images, these black and white images of these people.

And I kind of look deeply at them and imagine how they kind of lived their life then, helping people.

And one of them is.

I think it was in 17 something.

He would wave his handkerchief when he came out of his surgery for his pony and trap to come.

There's a love story about him.

So I do think some things are actually in your bones.

And you have this Reverence and love for something that is just deep within you.

Yeah, yep.

And it's.

I mean, and what, what a privilege and a blessing to be able, growing up, to have the space to listen to that and for that to be encouraged and honed.

Because it sounds like you've had a real apprenticeship, like old school, almost medieval apprenticeship.

It's.

And beautiful.

And also, I mean, that stretch in that north part of Scotland overlooking Orkney, I mean, this is where all the.

I'm thinking of all the kind of hermit monks were going to these kind of interesting spaces where the sky meets the sea meets the land and it's this real liminal, holy space.

Really interesting, Amy, really interesting.

Can I come back to the garlic?

How does that work?

Because I'm aware that with feet you've got reflexology, you've got these kind of pressure points.

The soles of the feet seem to be sort of an interesting absorbent space.

They are.

They seem to be an amazing.

I. I just think it's so strong.

Incredibly.

I mean, obviously, you know, it's very antibacterial, incredibly great for viruses and infections.

And I think that it just through the soles of the feet and went into the bloodstream and very quickly got to the lung somehow.

And you could smell it from my breath.

It's very.

Know that even when you eat garlic sandwich, you can smell it on your skin.

And it's old famous remedy, garlic isn't.

It was used for giving to soldiers when they had, I think when they ran out of antibiotics in the Second World War, I'm sure they used to use it for infections.

We had these incredible remedies at our fingertips that we've kind of.

People are beginning to go back to them now, but we've lost somewhere along the way.

So what.

And I'm going to presume that a lot of this knowledge, this has come with generations of just observation, trial and error.

When is the best time to kind of pick, for example, your wild garlic and to do things with it and what's the best, most effective process?

That's a lot of anecdotal evidence over generations.

Yeah, yeah, yep.

And a lot of, again, conversations between people saying, I've tried this, you've tried that.

Has this worked, has this not?

Yeah.

And I actually find anecdotal sometimes is the most powerful, you know, and actually if you look back at Culpepper, you know, hundreds of years ago, who treated people with herbs like they, they.

It's similar now, but we've learned more.

And anecdotally even for me to this day is so useful when I have patients coming in the shop and they teach me something or I look something up and there's in fact there's a really interesting website, it's called Earth Clin.

And it was originally started for people who found the incredible benefits from apple cider vinegar.

Oh yes.

Yeah.

So it started from this and there are all sorts of amazing remedies, things found from using apple cider vinegar.

But it's actually branched out now to other things.

You go in there and you can put in an ailment, for instance, and the incredible anecdotal stories from people that have used certain things to cure certain things.

So we have to be open minded.

Yeah, yeah, that's that, that's the thing.

It's the curiosity, isn't it?

And going, maybe there are other ways.

You know, I'm not, I'm not knocking kind of mainstream medicine at all because we need the doctors when we have a broken leg or, I don't know, an exploded appendix, all of these, this is, this is the kind of medicine we need.

But there just sort of seem to be a lot of kind of pills and potions that act as sticking plasters.

They seem to have quite a lot of side effects.

And you go, oh, I don't know.

So it's wonderful to hear that people are exploring kind of other options to support, to support their immune system or struggles that they're having.

This is wonderful that that curiosity is on the rise.

Can you talk to me?

Apple cider vinegar.

I mean, I read somewhere it's fantastic for Veruca's not the thing is.

And also amazing for something called plantar fasciitis that people often complain about if you not only drink it but you soak your feet and basin with warm water and apple cider vinegar.

So it be amazing to be with digestive issues.

Start play with a little shot of apple cider vinegar in a small bit of warm water.

Some people find it amazing for things like arthritis.

Yeah, it can be incredible for people who've got low stomach acid and find it hard to digest foods.

I'm sure there's something really interesting about children who are really fussy eaters as well.

It can really help.

But I mean I often, I actually personally just use it in salad dressings and not massively keen on the taste of it in water.

But some people absolutely love the taste of it.

And it's got the muffler, you know, the raw one.

Yeah.

I think that probably falls into the same Category, the people who love like a seriously sharp sauerkraut, you know, that kind of real tang.

That's the.

That it's going to tick a lot of those boxes.

Yeah.

But I mean, it's incredible.

And there's other amazing studies where it's been used for something called.

Oh my goodness.

Or

there's.

Or perioral dermatitis.

Or dermatitis is when you get this very strange rash mainly around the mouth.

Yeah.

Very, very hard to get rid of.

So actually Earth Clinic says amazing reports from people using some diluted apple cider vinegar, which will sting for a bit, but then peril or oral dermatitis can be around the mouth, it can be around the eyes, around the nose.

It's actually very common and can be caused by all sorts of things like fl, fluoride, toothpaste, antibiotics, whitening toothpaste, hormone stress.

So that's just one remedy that you can use for this very tricky skin condition which can take so long.

But.

But this skin can do.

It's different to eczema.

What is the difference?

It looks like a pimply rash.

Can be very itchy and red and raised.

Raised bumps.

You should.

You can Google it when I've finish.

But it's very interesting but seems to happen mainly in women, teenagers and it's very stubborn.

But you can use like apple cider vinegar.

A tea tree cream can be really, really useful stopping all Fluoride toothpaste, whitening toothpaste.

Eden.

Even using shampoo with sodium lauryl sulfate seems to make it worse because obviously that goes face.

But yeah, there's amazing remedies in our cupboards that we can use.

Yeah, yeah.

No, it's just, it's.

It is incredible.

It is incredible actually.

The, the things we have at our fingertips that we don't even realize can be so.

Even think about teas.

Very simple.

So chamomile tea, amazing for ibs.

Yeah.

Diet amazing for sleep.

It's a better tonic.

It's probably one of the best remedies for bloating, but also helps with the mind and worry.

And then peppermint tea is one of the best things for IBS and for bloating pain.

So these are all just teas.

Fennel tea for digestion and bringing in a good milk supply if you're breastfeeding, you know, all these wonderful garlic.

And the key with garlic is for the allicin which comes out when you crush garlic.

You have to crush garlic and leave it for a few moments for that active component to come out.

Which is then very antibacterial, antiviral, antimicrobial.

Incredible.

I've got actually floating around on my YouTube channel somewhere.

About three, four years ago I started doing cooking and recipes on there and then got distracted.

But one of the things I did get on there was a honey and garlic lemonade.

So again, crushed the garlic in the boiling water and you steep it and you add some raw honey and then the lemon in there and then the children just drink it.

It's got that little bit of kind of a spice pepperiness to it, but the sweetness with the honey and then it's just fantastic.

Just fantastic.

Yep.

Okay, so the allicin is when you actually crush it because a lot of people will just kind of start chopping it straight away in order to cook with it and things.

But like I remember speaking to a lady from Calabria years ago and she was very like, no, you have to crush it and you leave it for 15 minutes.

And was quite, quite, quite firm about this.

And I thought, well, I'm going to trust the slightly terrifying.

She's right about that.

You have to leave it.

It has to be damaged.

You have to damage that cell wall.

So it's a really good tip to know that because generally because we're all rushing.

So I now try and be mindful about when I'm preparing food.

I crush that and leave it.

Yeah.

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The links in the show notes, I mean what all the.

One of the things I am very interested in and I have a lot of my website and my digital products is actually just how important food cooked from scratch is the differences that can make in health.

Could you from your years of experience what kind of what have been some of the most dramatic changes you've seen when people have just improve the quality of the food that they're eating.

Well, do you know what, because I've been in this for so long, I've seen and experienced a lot of things.

I mean I was brought up vegetarian mainly.

Whether right or not, I'm not sure now.

But I think it's not just about what we consume, is it more it can also be about what we avoid because some people think they're having a great diet, but they're eating things that cause a lot of inflammation, like overdoing, like nuts and seeds and pulses that create wind and indigestion.

And I think something very important that people must remember is how you digest your food.

You want to have food that you feel good after that, you don't have a bloated tummy, you're not swollen, you're not windy, you're not in pain.

And I'm more and more actually, Zoe, say to people, go back to how your grandparents ate.

Eating easy to digest foods, good quality meat, good quality vegetables.

And of course, in the olden days, they would have eaten more meat on the bone.

And with that, that you benefits of the gelatin in there because little meat's very hard to digest.

But if you have meat on the bone, which is why it's great to boil up your chicken bones when you have a roast chicken.

I mean, you know, collagen became very famous over the last sort of five years.

But really our ancestors were doing that all along things our ancestors were doing.

And now, like they were eating butter.

Yeah, they were having.

They weren't having margarine, they were having meat on the bone and using the whole chicken.

So roasting the meat, using the meat and then using those bones to make a wonderful stock.

So I think we need to get back to eating more.

I'd say basic foods, but foods cooked from scratch, not ignoring signs that we can't digest food.

So if you find that eating a lot of broccoli and cabbage causes wind and bloating, don't have them for a while.

It's also very important that you have enough stomach acid because when our stomach acid is low, which by the way, is incredibly common.

Although they talk about indigestion being high, stomach acid is actually really mainly low stomach acid.

And what happens is this valve, which is ph sensitive.

If there isn't enough stomach acid, it stays sort of compromised.

And so food will come up.

What's causing that?

Why is the stomach acid amongst so many people so much lower now?

I think it's stress.

Yeah.

I think it's a mixture of.

We live in a crazy fast life.

Often people don't sit down, eat in peace, so they don't sit around the dinner table like we used to do.

There's TVs on, people looking at their phones, eating around the table.

Used to be a time when the family got together and we'd talk and we would just digest the day and eat in peace.

Now it's not so much that and it was a time of healing in all sorts of ways.

So I think we live in a fast paced world where we don't allow time to eat and digest.

We're rushing, we should never eat when we're upset.

So it's not just about the food and obviously the food matters a lot but it's how we're digesting that food.

Are we allowing time to sit and eat in peace?

And I think it's also very good like we used to do, which was to have even just a 15 minute walk after eating sugar help digestion.

So I think there's a few things that really help with food.

Good quality.

Yeah.

I was just going to say these are quite simple interventions but simple changes that you can make sort of really quite intentional.

We sit down, try our best to have a quiet dinner.

I suppose one of the tips I just want to give because I'm sure there are going to be loads of mums who go, oh my gosh, it's, you know, it's crazy at six o', clock, seven o' clock when I'm trying to feed the children on a weekday, that's bonkers.

Blah, blah, blah.

Which, yes that, that is bonkers.

But I suppose my suggestion would be how about you have it at 4:30 as soon as the children come back from school, have it as early your kind of your big meal, sitting together as early in the day as you can.

So that there is more of that.

I totally understand that.

I mean my daughter's got a little girl just over a year and I know she finds eating times really stressful.

So she basically feeds the little one and they have dinner afterwards.

She's in bed and it's still a bit later than it should be.

But I just think all these things, if you think your digestion feels so ramped up when you're stressed and, and then what happens is you're, if you're living in constant flight, fight or flight, digestion out the window and if you can't digest food, you're not able to take on those nutrients as well.

You're not able, they're not able to be utilized.

And well, because basically your body's trying to keep you out of that stress mode and all the, all the circulation leaves this incredible area.

So I think it's very common to have low stomach acid and, and one way of helping that is to start the day with that little shot of apple cider vinegar with warm water.

See more bitter foods like they do in other countries where they just Start their meal with a.

A better.

What they're called Swedish betters.

So you can start incorporating more better foods into your diet.

Good quality coffee.

Yeah.

Things like olives as well.

Olives are fantastic for that kind of olives.

Fermented, if you get good ones.

Right now we've dandelions coming out, adding a few dandelion leaves, greens to your salad.

Artichokes, you know, all those things that are bitter are so good to have before your meal to aid digestion.

Yep.

And this is again, it makes me think of this Calabrian woman because this is all the stuff that you would have as your antipasta.

That's what you would have before you're kind of cooked the nibble or, you know, your dry white wine, which starts that kind of process as well.

Yeah.

It's interesting.

I sort of reflect a bit of my time in Italy, but there is a real, uh.

There was a real ritual, but quite precision about what you would have at particular points in the meal.

So for example, at the end of the meal, after you've had your sweet, you have like a digestive or the digestive shock or something.

And that's often going to be something quite herbal, that cardamom or something like that.

Yeah, yeah.

That cuts through what you've eaten and just calms everything.

It's.

And then coming back to the family altogether, having the meals, blah, blah, blah.

It's.

Yeah.

Very, very powerful.

Why have we back to those rituals?

They are rituals we need to get back in China.

Their ritual is to gather around and have.

When we lived at home in Scotland, we were around this huge table.

It was made from an old boat actually, in Orkney, and had an amazing sort of presence about this huge table.

And then after the meal, my father would always make a pot of oolong tea, green tea.

It's lovely.

And aids digestion.

It became a ritual.

There's something really sort of ritualistic about this whole thing.

But it felt very good.

And I know it's really hard with living like that.

We do.

But if we just do that one thing, imagine the difference it could make.

We decide that we make a meal time as a family, a special time, almost holy time really, because we've always gathered round tables for all sorts of things, for food, for prayer, to comfort one another, to talk things over.

And we maybe just need to bring that back in as a habit.

No, this is sacred and we're going to do this.

And also as families really very much saying this is a non negotiable.

This is a point in the day that we come together.

Because I know it's very easy to say, oh, but there's football practice.

Oh, but there's this activity or, but there's, there's this.

Which can.

These kind of external pressures that take little nibbles and then bigger bites out of family life.

True.

And then obviously there's the kind of the financial pressures, a lot of people working and things like that.

But incorporating, you know, even if it's kind of a breakfast, it might not necessarily be in the evening, it might be in the morning that you have this time that you're saying, no, this is a precious time.

10 minutes minimum.

This is what we, we are as a family together.

Hugely important.

Hugely important.

I'm going to compare and contrast between my beautiful idealized image of Italy, which I know is increasingly modern, but there's still elements of this, this food culture and this family culture there.

What, how have we lost this in the Anglo Saxon world?

I think about Britain, this isn't a thing.

America, not so much.

You know, what's happened?

Why have we lost this?

Maybe people just don't realize how important it is.

I think we.

Other priorities come in.

Like you just said, like we just like we were only allowed as children to have dinner on our laps on a Saturday night.

We were watching some silly Saturday night program.

But apart from that, my mother was really strict about that time together.

We all sat down together and it was non negotiable.

But now I also think we let things slip as well.

We just.

And as you say, when we let one thing slip, something else slips.

But actually these are fundamental to family life.

They're more important than people realize.

I think they can bring a family closer together for sure.

And yes, maybe there's some strictness has to come in and we have to say no more and we have to, you know, maybe annoy the children for a while or.

But I just, I mean I.

My children have left home now.

They're.

They're 30, both of them.

But there's nothing I love more than when they come round and we all sit around the table together.

There's something incredibly healing about that, incredibly beneficial for all of us.

And also having the time to cook a meal lovingly, you know, without rushing, deciding, well, on a Saturday or a Sunday, let's just say you can't do every day because I know things are not perfect.

It can be very difficult.

But maybe just choosing a day like they did in the olden days, you'd all sit together for lunch and have a Sunday lunch together.

Yeah, yeah.

And it was long and protracted, and before you knew it, it was three o'.

Clock.

There was.

There were times around my kitchen table in Scotland where my mother would invite friends and we'd sit just discussing things for hours, and before you knew, it was dinner time.

Yeah, yeah.

Just sounds lunchtime.

And it was wonderful.

I think we just have to make choices.

Yeah.

We have to decide that we're going to do something and stick with it.

Yeah.

And act on it.

Even though there will be arguments and fighting at all.

As you say, I don't want to do this, but actually, as mothers, as the parents, we are the ones who set the culture of our family.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Hugely important.

And coming back to the Sunday roast, which I love, because the wonderful thing about that is you can.

The opportunity for sort of leftovers is quite incredible.

I'm thinking, for example, if you've got roast leg of lamb or something, then you stew it with bone in it and again, you're getting sort of like a secondary meal with all the collagen and all the flavors coming out.

And actually coming back to your point about cooking like our grandmothers, one of the easy ways, for those who are listening, if you are making something like a chicken, if you are going to be cooking with chicken, you do chicken size, or you throw literally kind of a marrow bone in with whatever stew or soup you're cooking, let it sit and then that can release so much of the goodness into it.

So it's just kind of easy.

Easy, easy, easy.

So, got a question?

Because certainly in Britain, it's not quite as easy as it used to be to get an appointment to see the gp.

And I know various mothers who will be, you know, child is unwell, they're not quite sure how to assess if this is an important thing or just a sniffle.

What kind of tips could you give some of these mums to empower them to take on the health.

Oh, I'm not using the phrase.

Right.

But to improve the health.

Health of their children.

What's.

What are sort of easy tips that they could implement into their lives, their children's lives, that would make a difference?

Well, there's actually quite a lot of simple, free ways to do that.

I think children should be allowed to get dirty, like I did in Scotland.

We were always at the farm or in the mud making mud pies from docking leaves and mud.

I think that helps build immunity.

And there's incredible benefits from getting your hands in the soil.

These microbes go through and have an amazing positive impact on your immune system.

So let your children get dirty, let them play outside in as much daylight as possible, which also is incredible for their health.

It helped the circadian rhythm.

It will help them sleep better at night.

It improves immunity.

So being out early in the morning, walking to school, walking back from school, spending time.

I was outside all day long when I lived in Scotland.

All day long in all sorts of weathers, making sure they have a peaceful, good bedtime routine.

If they don't sleep well, consider giving them the old fashioned good quality milk and honey.

Yeah.

Lovely Californian poppy if they have nightmares or anxiety, which is incredibly good.

It's also very good for bed wetting, by the way.

Can I.

So the California poppy, how is that?

It's a little tainted.

Have a few drops and a little bit of apple juice and it works very well and it's very safe.

What's in it?

That causes the.

That calms the anxiety and the night terrors.

It's a wonderful nervine.

But I found that it also.

Maybe it works through the vagus nerve.

But it's amazing for bed wetting as well.

Wow.

Children that have a nervous tummy or they can't switch off at nighttime.

I even remember giving it to a man who was in his late 90s.

He had agoraphobia and it worked beautifully for him.

So it has a wonderful multifactorial.

But I love going back to the old fashioned remedies of milk and honey.

Soothing.

If you think milk is full of magnesium and calcium which are known as the relaxation minerals.

You add a bit of honey which takes down the cortisol and you've got this lovely horrific sleepy drink.

Yep, yep.

And then with the question about.

Because I will sometimes have a hot cocoa with my honey, you know, with my milk.

But there's something in the chocolate as well with the cacao.

I'm trying to remember my brain or is that going to be more of a stimulant?

And I shouldn't be having the cocoa.

It can be too stimulating for some people.

But I always say to Muds to put a little bit of hot chocolate in there, do that wheat.

But obviously dark chocolate.

Things like that can keep you awake and are too stimulating.

But when I grandmothers we'd always have Ovaltine or something like that.

Isn't so nice now because it's got vegetable oils in it.

But I remember loving it.

It was part of.

Again it was a ritual thing at 7 o' clock to have this and I loved it so Sleep's very important for children's immune system.

Sleep removing.

I think it's very important if your child complains of lots of sore tummies that you have to remove irritant.

And it can be all manner of things.

It could be bread.

Some children overdose on things like pasta and bread and they say they've got sore tummy all the time.

But you have to look at that and really try and be a detective and remove those irritating foods.

Can I have five minutes?

Then you can come back?

Yes, yeah, yeah.

Often meet children who are maybe pale or they're dark under the eyes and for me that's always a sign of a digestive issue.

Make sure you listen to them when they say they've got a sore tummy.

I don't think it's great.

Or start the day on a grain cereal breakfast for all sorts of reasons.

My dad always used to say that cereals were dead food, which is quite interesting, dead food.

So if there's something like eggs or even sourdough with good quality butter, eggs with protein in there or even eggs with a glass of good quality orange juice, which is a carbohydrate.

So they've got protein and fat and carbohydrate to start the day rather than on these fast cereals which drop you like a stone very quickly.

And I know you irritated.

Yeah, yeah.

I remember a huge change with my children when I started introducing omelets.

Eggs for breakfast.

That is a fundamental.

And the.

Yeah.

Just kind of the changes in behavior.

There was much more calmness.

They could kind of push on for much longer throughout the mornings.

It was quite.

Energy.

They need energy.

Cope with school.

Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, stuff that's going to help them concentrate and think clearly.

Yeah.

There's actually a lovely girl that I know, she's formulated a wonderful rosemary balm which I'll talk about another day.

But they.

That just sniffing rosemary.

Studies have found it helps children concentrate and do their exams better.

Just smelling rosemary.

I mean, we've got the.

We all have this growing in our gardens.

Incredible children.

Yeah, that's.

That is amazing.

And this is all.

This is all just such easy stuff that we can access.

It's.

It's small changes within a family's daily rhythm.

Things you can just get from the supermarket round the corner and that can really, really transform.

Transform people's lives.

It's incredible for their immune systems.

My favorite remedies for children are elderberry and of course, elder flower.

During the summer months, when June comes, we can start collecting Making an elderberry cordial, which could be amazing for fevers.

Summer irritants like hay fever, stuffed up nose, itchy eyes.

So elderflower is wonderful for summer allergies.

And the berries which come, I always say, just the right time.

Potent antiviral.

You can make your own elderberry syrup so easily.

I have a recipe on my website and that you can give to your children a little dose every single day during the winter months as a preventative.

But they've also found that when you take elderberry, when you have an active virus, so you lessens the viral load, so it makes the virus less strong and it reduces the length of time.

Wow.

So do that along with vitamin C. Zinc for children.

Good quality zinc.

I think there are very simple ways to keep children's immune system strong.

Keeping stress low.

Yep, yep.

Children get stressed these days.

They do, because there's so much.

And with school being so busy and I mean, obviously there's a lot more screens and things like that, but it's.

It's about being intentional, isn't it?

Really is about being intentional, creating these calm spaces.

And again, as mothers, as parents, we are the ones who are able to do that.

Yeah.

Even if it's a battle.

And it is a battle sometimes, but we have to do.

I remember I used to have my children have a story every bedtime.

I was incredibly strict with their bedtime routine because I just knew that sleep is so healing.

You need a child to sleep well, to wake up refreshed.

So it's.

Parents have a tough time.

Tougher than we ever had, I think, because of all the other distractions.

But there's some stoicism has to come in here and some stickability and strictness.

Balance with love, you know?

Yeah.

Yep, yep.

No, very true indeed.

Very true indeed.

Naomi, this has just been fantastic.

Thank you.

There's been so many, so much to think about, but also so many wonderful and easy changes that mums can make into their family lives.

I think it's been very important conversation.

Thank you so much for your time.

I would like to.

Where can people find you?

I think I said at the beginning, your Instagram account.

Where else?

Well, we have a website which is botanicahealth.co.uk and my Instagram account, uh, yeah, I do mainly my work on there these days.

Okay.

I will put all the links in the show notes so everybody can go down and have a look and click through.

And I would like to say to all the listeners, please, like, share, subscribe, get the word out and thank you for your ongoing support.

Naomi, thank you.

That has just been fantastic.

God bless you.

Thank you.

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