Navigating Cold & Flu Season Naturally & Effectively: An Interview with MediNatura’s Expert Educator

Discover natural, homeopathic solutions for cold and flu season from our own Marie Camille in a recent interview on Vitality Radio podcast.

As we move into the cold and flu season, many of us are seeking ways to protect ourselves and manage symptoms safely and effectively. In a recent episode of Vitality Radio, Jared St. Clair invited MediNatura’s expert educator, Marie Camille, to discuss our innovative, layered ingredient approach to homeopathic immune support and symptom relief. In this insightful conversation, Marie offers practical advice on how to incorporate MediNatura’s products, particularly the Reboost line, into a wellness routine for this season. Read on for the (slightly abridged) transcript, and discover natural ways to stay resilient this winter.

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Jared St. Clair: Hello, and welcome to Vitality Radio, the podcast where we help you master natural supplements, enhance emotional vitality, and thrive without the use of pharma drugs. I am your host. My name is Jared St. Clair, and it's good to be with you again on another episode of Vitality Radio.  

It is cold and flu season as we all know. And, of course, you know, if you've been listening to the show regularly, we've been hitting a lot on immune stuff. Today is going to be very immune focused as well, but specifically from a homeopathic standpoint. So if you're into homeopathy, and not just herbs and vitamins and minerals, amino acids and things like that, you're gonna love this episode. If you are still kind of not so sure you understand homeopathy and how it works and why it may be one of the best things to help balance your health, then stay tuned because there's gonna be some great information for you here on this episode.

I am bringing back a guest that was very, very well received. The last time that we did Vitality Radio with her, we were talking about natural pain relief through homeopathy. And, this episode, again, we're gonna talk more about cold and flu. I've got Marie Camille on the show with me. Once again, Marie, welcome back to Vitality Radio.

Marie Camille: Thank you. It's so great to be back, Jared. 

Jared St. Clair: Well, it's great to have you. We talked about homeopathy for natural pain relief, with a series of formulas that you have in your brand, called T-Relief. Do you wanna give us a brief overview of that?

Marie Camille: Yeah. Absolutely. So T-Relief is made by MediNatura. We always say T-Relief stands for total relief. It is all plant based. The actives are all plant-based in the Arnica Plus 12 formula. 

So a lot of us know Arnica. Right? Very effective for swelling, bruising, trauma, whether you use it topically or internally, through an oral form. But our formulation is a little more comprehensive. Say your pain is not coming from bruising, swelling, trauma, but maybe muscle soreness, nerves, bone, joint, back pain, injury due to overuse. Arnica doesn't have quite the same effect on those issues as our other targeted ingredients in this formula. And just to call out a few of those ingredients, we have Hypericum, which is for nerve pain, Chamomilla for radiating pain, Symphytum for bone and joint pain, and one of my favorites, Ruta, which is for injury due to overuse.

And at my age, there seems to be a little bit of overuse.

Jared St. Clair: Yeah. Me too.

Marie Camille: We have 2 topical options, a cream and a gel. The cream, of course, is very moisturizing. No scents are added to these. The cream is smooth. It's got a base of organic shea butter and 3 organic oils, and then the gel glides on really smooth and dries very quickly. Then if you want the internal versions, we have a lactose free chewable tablet, and we have a low alcohol oral drop.

Jared St. Clair: Excellent. And I will say that, you know, since you were on before, that was a pretty new product for us. We carried the T-Relief cream, and we've had some really, really great feedback on it. So appreciate you educating our listeners on that. 

But this [conversation today] is really going to round out a series of a few episodes very focused on immune response, especially this time of year when people tend to get worn down a little more. So the product that you have in your line that is specific to cold and flu, is called Reboost. And you've got a nasal spray, you've got a throat spray, and you've also got a tablet. Let's go ahead and start with the tablet and, help us understand why it's developed the way it is and what people can expect in using it.

Marie Camille: I love that you talked about supplements and herbs first [in other episodes] because homeopathy is such a great add on with those things. I take my medicinal mushrooms, I take my herbs, my supplements, my vitamin A, my vitamin D, and then I will add in a very inexpensive and high safety profile homeopathic, and that can just round things out. 

Now, I love these [Reboost] tablets.This is more of a systemic formula. We'll get into the focus formulas of the nasal spray and the throat spray later. [The tablets are] gonna have the maximum relief of 8 different cold and flu symptoms. We combine zinc, the same zinc as Zicam®, if you know that product. And then we also have the same dilution of Anas barbariae [that’s also used] in one of your probably most popular products called Oscillococcinum®. And then there's 9 other natural ingredients in there. For symptoms like chills, headache, body aches, congestion, cough, runny nose, nausea, fatigue - you get very quick and lasting results. 

You can use these 24/7. Each tablet actually contains 6.6 milligrams of zinc, and I actually think they're very yummy. Most people do. They're an organic lemon and organic Stevia. Like I mentioned, no known drug interactions, so great to add in with whatever else you might be taking. 

And a few ingredients in here that I just like to pull out because it's just a comprehensive formula. I mentioned the Anas barbariae. That is what we know to reduce the severity of cold and flu symptoms. They're in some other products you probably carry. We also have Bryonia, which relieves body aches and fatigue, and it's just an overall really good remedy for movement. Eupatorium relieves chills and body aches as well as headaches due to flu, and Lachesis, which relieves cough and also helps with sore throat. 

There's dosing instructions on this packaging from adults down to 4 years old. So it's just a really great formula for the whole family.

Jared St. Clair: Yeah. I will second the fact that it does taste really good. I've definitely used this product. It's easy to give, including to children. And I wanna hit on a couple of things that I think are really important.

First, I wanna talk about the options for symptom relief in the market today, especially when you consider restrictions and things that the FDA puts on us in terms of what we can and can't say about herbs and vitamins and things like that. The things that can actually, you know, talk about symptom relief are basically in the, quote unquote drug world. Now what's interesting about homeopathy that many people listening probably don't know is that it's regulated, like a drug in America even though it is natural, and doesn't come with the laundry list of potential side effects that are associated with pharmaceuticals. But when people see a product like this on a health food store shelf, maybe they're not familiar with homeopathy. They look at it and it says, you know, max cold and flu symptom relief.

And it says, that it's got, you know, Zinc aceticum, it says it reduces cold and flu symptoms. Then, you know, one that says body aches and fatigue and all these different things. It looks and sounds like a drug, and yet it's not.

Technically, legally, I guess it is. But in every other way, it belongs in a store like Vitality Nutrition. And I love that because especially in the cold and flu world, we now have all these products on the shelves of Walgreens and Target and places like this, Marie, that have similar claims in terms of what they can potentially do for you and have multiple different drugs in them. Little drug cocktails like, NyQuil or DayQuil. Right?

Products like that. And yet, people paying attention listening to shows like Vitality Radio may have heard me talk about the dangers of drug combinations like that. And the fact that those drugs, for the most part, have not been studied as cocktails. They've been studied independently of each other, but not, you know, 5 or 6 drugs stacked on top of each other. And so some people are looking for symptom relief, but they're not looking for side effects, and they don't really like to rely on drugs for that symptom relief. 

And I love where you guys fill the gap with a product like Reboost and go right in there where we can talk about what it does, and also deliver a safe remedy for these types of symptoms.

Marie Camille: Absolutely. I see it as a positive as well. Homeopathic products that are sold in the US are regulated by the FDA.

We are considered an OTC drug, like NyQuil or Sudafed. That just means ‘over the counter’. And that's why you will see a drug fact panel on the back of our cartons, aka the boxes. And I like it as well because legally we actually have to put a health indication on our packaging. Whereas supplements cannot put a health indication on their packaging.

Now homeopathy has been around for 100s of years. It's botanicals, it's minerals, diluted substances, many of which we know well, like zinc or echinacea. Anas barbariae is an animal product, but they're all some level of natural dilutions. That FDA oversight, I think, just gives us a little leg up as far as we're gonna have a very quality product that ensures good manufacturing practices. And, also, we have to adhere to both the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States as well as FDA when it comes to how we make our products, and how we test our products.

Then you get to just read down the back of that packaging. The Latin names are a little hard to read and understand, but if you just look in that purpose column, we legally have to say what it does, and we can only say what is identified as a purpose by the FDA and the HPUS. So there's a lot of extra oversight in it, and a lot of extra GMPs for drugs that are actually more strict than dietary supplements.

Jared St. Clair: Right. Yeah. So it's quite regulated. And frankly, homeopathy to some degree coming under attack on a regular basis from some politician or government body because they don't want it to be, you know, sold over the counter the way that it is. If it's gonna be a drug, you know, maybe it should be a prescription. There's all kinds of talk about this stuff, which is absurd because homeopathy is so incredibly safe, safer than any other over the counter drug that I can certainly think of. 

And when I found out that you folks had done, what you've done with arnica in the pain relief side, basically taking something that is an absolute proven winner, for pain and bruising and swelling and all that with arnica, you did the same thing with this particular ingredient that is in your Reboost that is an absolute proven winner, but doesn't cover all the bases. And then you've put all of these other really great complimentary ingredients surrounding it, and it just makes perfect sense to me. 

I brought it home in all three forms and said these will be on my shelf so that at the very first sign of any type of symptoms, I can jump on Reboost and get on top of it very, very quickly. Because what I've experienced with that ingredient, in all three formulas, Marie, is that if you get it in really fast, oftentimes, things don't develop nearly like you would have expected them to. 

Marie Camille: Yeah. We at MediNatura do things a little differently than other homeopathic companies. Really based on the work of our founder, Dr. Reckeweg, we use more actives and more of each active, in our formulations. And that's because Dr. Reckeweg found a synergy to using multiple ingredients. 

So there's arnica. We all know it's awesome. We add 12 other ingredients in there that's gonna create a synergy that's gonna cover a lot more bases on the pain situation. 

Again, with Reboost, same idea. You figured out our whole principle; we take things that we know really work, and we add in so many other great ingredients that also create more all encompassing symptom relief. We want maximum symptom relief, not just at onset or not just for a particular situation. Like I had mentioned with the Reboost tablets, whether you're full blown sick and 4 or 5 days into it or it's just the beginning, there's gonna be symptom relief for cough, for nausea, for fatigue, body aches, chills. A lot more is going on here than just with that Anas barbariae, which reduces the severity of cold and flu symptoms.

That has been proven. We know that. But we might want a little extra for the cough or for the runny nose, etc.

Jared St. Clair: It's obvious to me, you know, anybody that's been sick that you'd want relief of multiple different symptoms if you've got multiple different symptoms. 

Okay. So then we just talked about the tablets. You have 2 other Reboost formulas, and they're similar but different. So let's go throat spray and talk about that because you told me something right before we started recording that I had never thought of and I've certainly not used it this way, but I'm very intrigued to in the future. So tell us about the throat spray, and, how it's used, how it's different from the tablets, and the different types of uses that you have for it.

Marie Camille: Yeah. So this is a pretty special throat spray. The symptom relief is so much greater than what you might find in a typical throat spray. We combine zinc, again, with the Anas barbariae plus 12 additional natural actives to provide really rapid and long lasting relief of 7 different cold and flu symptoms. So, we assume that the person's probably taking this when they're having some type of cold and flu situation. But why stop at minor sore throat pain when we can also get relief from headache, chills, fatigue, body ache, cough, runny nose? These are all indications listed on the back of our box for the ingredients in this formulation.  

It's a really pleasant natural cherry flavor. There's no dyes or artificial colors. And as some of those ingredients that I just talked about as far as what else they do. So sore throat pain, yeah, we've got that covered, but we've also got Hydrastis and Phytolacca, which both relieve cough, runny nose, fatigue. We also put Plantago in this formula, and that is for sore throat pain, but also for headache. And Belladonna relieves sore throat pain that feels really hot. This particular formula, the dosing instructions are for adults and teenagers down to 12 years old.  

Jared St. Clair: And it's super pleasant tasting. Why would someone choose the tablets versus the throat spray, or would there be an occasion that it makes sense to use both?

Marie Camille: Well, I personally love using both. I usually recommend that the person pick the area that they have the most issue with. You know, there's those of us who have the most issue in our sinuses, there's those of us who have the most issue in our throat, or maybe we would just prefer tablets. And then once you really get involved with it or maybe fall in love with it, you may want to try something else, and go from there.

We saved the best product for last. Personally, it’s my favorite.

Jared St. Clair: Okay!

Marie Camille: Because I think I’m a lot like you, I know you have some allergy issues. My challenge in my life right now is my sinuses. We call this the Decongestion Nasal Spray and that is because two words to really describe how this product works best is ‘painful and plugged’.

You are going to get maximum sinus relief from pressure, headache, stuffiness, pain. It works really quickly, fast, and it's lasting. You've got that same Anas barbarie in this formula. We do not put zinc in this because we never wanna put zinc in our nasal passages. But this formula, it just immediately opens up my sinuses.

I like to use it even during allergy season. And besides [relief from] that painful and plugged pressure & headache, you're also getting relief from post nasal drip, sneezing, and runny nose. Along with that Anas barbarie, which reduces the severity of generalized cold and flu symptoms. You get all of that with the safe steroid free, non jittery, non drowsy, natural, nasal spray. More information is on the drug fact panel and you can use this product 24/7.

Jared St. Clair: Well, it's interesting the way that you laid that out actually got me thinking, what will I use? Because I mentioned earlier that I have all 3 of these at home, and I've at least, you know, tasted the throat spray and the tablets. But I haven't had the occasion to really use any of them for any extended length of time. Thankfully, I haven't needed to, which is great. But, you know, eventually, the body gets a little worn down.

I just got back from 7 days of traveling. I'm very tired today as we do this. And I know if I don't get a good night's sleep tonight, tomorrow night, you know, that's when the throat will start getting a little scratchy and the sinuses will start, clogging up a little bit.  

And if I don't knock it out quick, both of those will really get kinda crazy, and I'll get very plugged up and, lots of no nose running as well and then the sore throat. So for me, I think the 2 that I'll probably resort to more often than not will be the 2 sprays, the nasal spray and the throat spray. Those make perfect sense for me. For someone else, I don't tend to get a lot of, like, the body ache type stuff, and some of these other things. I don't know that it makes sense for me to use the tablets if I've got the other 2, but for somebody else, the tablets might make sense.

Marie Camille: I can't say enough about them! I love these products and the taste of them and all the things that you've brought up. They're inexpensive. You know, you talked about side effects. And because we are regulated by the FDA and we're an OTC drug, when you read the back of some of these OTCs, Sudafed®, Advil®, whatever it might be, there are some scary side effects. They legally have to put those on their packaging. We do not have to put those on our packaging because we don't have those side effects. 

Jared St. Clair: That is a great point because I mentioned at the beginning, it looks like a drug. It's got the claims on the front. It has the claims on the back. It even says drug facts, but the big thing that's missing is the big list of side effects. 

I love it. So, yeah, these are fantastic products. Definitely something to have in your arsenal. 

Okay. Excellent. Well, Marie, same this time as it was last time, a wealth of information here. I really want to impress on you listening to this show that these formulas I think are really, really important. And this is really how I look at homeopathy personally.

Now there are some people that homeopathy is their first line of defense. I have no problem with that. If you are competent in homeopathy and, you know, you know, you're well read and understand what works for what and all these types of things. Obviously, with your formulas, Marie, it's pretty easy. It's laid out there for us, versus the individual single ingredients.

But I look at them as stacks. I really look at homeopathy as a perfect complement to, you know, your vitamin c and your echinacea, your elderberry, your nano silver, your get well, stay well, you know, these types of formulas because they really are not they're attacking things from a very, very different, angle, than what you're getting with herbs and vitamins and minerals and and amino acids and things like that. And they're super, super, or, complimentary, and I would say even synergistic when stacked together. So if you haven't dipped your toes into homeopathy much, this is a great opportunity to try it out. 

And I love the formulas that you folks have come up with because they're so comprehensive in their scope as well. So thank you so much for what you're doing to educate me and my listeners and also to come out with fantastic and affordable products for them to try.

Marie Camille: Absolutely. My pleasure, Jared.

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And thanks to Marie for sharing your voice and expertise! Homeopathic remedies like Reboost can be an excellent addition to traditional immune support strategies, offering symptom relief without unwanted side effects. Remember, it's essential to consult with your healthcare provider before making any changes to your health regimen, especially during cold and flu season. Stay well, stay informed, and consider adding natural solutions like Reboost to your health toolkit this season.