
Several years ago we were going through a winter with sniffles and hacking cough. It was annoying but not enough to go to the doctor and take medications. I reached out to friends to see if anyone had good ideas of strengthening your immune system and boost your health.
The top suggestions were to get enough rest, stay hydrated, avoid indoor crowds and such.
A few good ones included things you could consume such as vitamin C, honey, chicken soup and citrus.
Manuka Honey from New Zealand was recommended by a few people as it has pollen that boosts immunity. It is however quite expensive, especially if you buy high grade honey.
Ginger shots were also recommended and seemed very interesting. I reached to a few people who suggested them to get an idea of how they made them. Most were bought but there are a number of ways described out there for people who want to try making their own. Some suggest boiling the fresh ginger or even dried ginger while others use all fresh items. A couple of friends said they do the ginger shots through the cold season – end of October to early March and said it has boosted their health.

This made me very interested and I did some research, both reading and experimenting.
Citrus is very good as it has a lot of vitamin C, honey is very beneficial with Manuka showing research backed results and local honey having benefits from being collected from plants in your environment. Regular mass produced honey can be mixed with sugar and be of questionable origin so a quality local honey is better.
From several doctors advice as well as written information, it is much better to eat whole fruit than to drink strained juice as you will miss out on some nutrients and most of the fiber. So juicing the citrus and grating the apple and ginger gives more benefits. The honey on top of the health benefit, helps to make the tartness from the lemon more palatable.
While you can add a lot of other things to the mix, we add turmeric for benefits to joints and black pepper which apparently activates the turmeric. There is just enough in the shot that you do get some but that it does not affect the flavor negatively.

A word of caution: Turmeric in too high doses can give you a reaction – I have tested this out, not on purpose but it happened. If you consume too much turmeric it can give you hives. Bubble wrap style breakout all over your body your skin will blister. As freaky as it is, things usually return to normal pretty quickly. Mine returned to normal in 12 hours. Still, don’t overdo it.
This is my recipe for the ginger shot, we enjoy it most of the winter. The ingredients do have documented health benefits and we have stayed relatively healthy. I also think this version tastes pretty good – it does have a fair amount of pulp though. Along with chicken soup, rest and exercise it has helped us stay off medication and out of doctors offices.