I’m sure that many of you have been victims of the debilitating coughs, colds and flues that appear to be out in full force at the moment. With this in mind I thought it would be useful to share these tips about responsible handling of medication from an article in the July issue of Real Simple Magazine:

• Check all packaging to see if it can be recycled.
• Do not stock up on more medicine than you need.
• Dispose of drugs safely: expired medication should be returned to suppliers. Pharmacies take back expired medicine which is then collected by medical-waste companies who dispose of it in a responsible manner (usually in an incinerator which burns at extremely high temperatures to eliminate the toxic fumes).
• Do not flush expired medicine down the toilet as most sewage treatment plants aren’t designed to filter these drugs out and so they make their way into rivers and dams and eventually our drinking water.
• You avoid this problem when using herbal medicine as it is biodegradable, however there are a couple of things to keep in mind:

o Ensure that the ingredients are grown locally and sourced from properly cultivated organic stock and not harvested from their wild habitats (which would disrupt the ecosystem and deplete natural resources).
o Make sure the herbal product is packaged in recycled containers.

• Here are some useful herbal remedies to try:

o Chillies – full of vitamin C to ward off colds
o Garlic – a natural antibiotic
o Echinacea – an immune booster
o Calendula ointment – anti-inflammatory, astringent and antiseptic.

Feel free to add any other tips to this list.