I love ginger. It's such a zesty herb and packs a pungent flavour punch. You may know about taking ginger for nausea, morning sickness or to calm your stomach, but ginger is also a potent anti-viral substance. It does this by preventing adhesion of the virus to the respiratory mucosa. Ginger is also powerfully anti-inflammatory and is known in herbal medicine as a diaphoretic. This means it helps to control a fever by promoting sweating. All of these characteristics make ginger a wonderful herb for fighting off colds and flus.
To use ginger therapuetically for colds and flus I suggest buying around 400-500 grams of the rhizome. It's best if you have a juicer for this as you can juice all the ginger and store the juice in a glass jar in the fridge. If you don't have a juicer, you could use a blender or grater to blend it up into a pulp and use it this way. To make a tea, add about 70ml of fresh ginger juice to your cup and fill with boiling water. You could also add a squeeze of lemon juice and a pinch of cayenne pepper for extra stimulation and sweeten with some honey or manuka honey if you like.
Drink this tea every 3 hours or so at the onset of a cold/flu and bam! Cold be gone!