What is an oxymel?

An oxymel is an immune boosting drink made from raw honey and apple cider vinegar with the mother.  You can add a wide variety of herbs to enhance the immune boosting qualities of the drink.  It has been around since the time of Hippocrates.  You can make it up and keep it in your refrigerator through the flu and cold season.  I think it works best if you take it when you first feel like you might be getting sick, before whatever you are fighting has had a chance to get well established in your system.  Others take a little bit now and then as a preventative.  We all know that families pass around illnesses to each other.  When someone in the family gets sick have everyone else start drinking and eating the oxymel to avoid getting sick also.

For this oxymel I choose to add garlic.

Let me tell you a little story about garlic.

  

I was taking a microbiology class where we were growing some pretty nasty bacteria.  The idea was to learn which antibiotics worked best against each of the different bacteria.  Once we had a well-established colony growing we would drop an antibiotic disc in the petri dish then put it back in the incubator.  The next day we observed the dishes and found the antibiotic disc that was working had a halo of about 1/8 of an inch cleared around it.

  

After we finished all the experiments required our professor asked if there was anything natural we would like to try.  He didn’t believe in natural medicine and I think he wanted to prove to us how superior mainstream medicine is to natural medicine. 

 

 We chose to use garlic.  We cut the smallest possible piece of garlic and put it in the petri dish.  The next day when we took it out we were all shocked, especially the professor.  Every petri dish on that level was completely cleared.  The dishes above and below had also been significantly compromised. Our little piece of garlic proved to be completely superior to all the antibiotics we had been using.

The Recipe

  • 1 quart of water
  • 1 bulb of garlic
  • ¼ c raw honey
  • ¼ c apple cider vinegar

Peel all the cloves of garlic and put into a pan with the water.  Bring to a boil then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes.  Take off the heat and stir in the honey and vinegar.  Mix until the honey has dissolved into the water.  Pour into a jar with a tight lid and keep in the refrigerator.

To take this pour a little of the juice into a cup.  Add a few of the garlic cloves.  Sip on the drink and eat the garlic.  At this point the garlic will be very bland so eating it is no problem.  Take this when you first start to feel off or when anyone in the house is feeling sick.  It is great to keep a family from passing around everything anyone catches.

 

 

 

A Word about the Ingredients

Garlic

I try to pick the largest bulb of organic garlic that I can.  Remember we are using it to make medicine so we don’t want pesticides or genetically modified garlic.  When using organic, the bulbs tend to be on the small side.

Raw honey

Raw honey tends to crystalize so companies process their honey with heat to prevent or slow down the crystallization.  The heat will take away some of its medicinal value.  If your honey has crystalized it will still work just fine.  Just measure it out and put into the oxymel.  Using local honey is also beneficial to the immune system.  Local bees are foraging in the same environment we live in.  This helps the honey strengthen our immune response to those environmental factors.

Apple Cider Vinegar with the Mother

You will only find the mother in raw vinegar.  Look carefully and you will find tiny bits of stuff floating around.  This is the mother.  If left on the shelf it may settle to the bottom and form a slimy blob.  It looks awful and feels slimy but it is actually really good for the immune system.  The mother is what actually makes the vinegar.

Disclaimer:

No statements on this website have been evaluated by the FDA.  No statement on this site constitutes medical advice.  Consult a medical doctor before trying any remedy on this website.  We do not claim that any remedy on this site will cure anything. We are sharing our own anecdotal experiences with these formulas.  All remedy ingredients are clearly stated.  You are responsible to know your own allergies and to protect against them.