Kitchen cures: Fast home remedies

ATLANTA - When we feel bad, many of us assume we need a pill or a trip to the doctor's office to help us feel better, but that may not be the case.  A fast fix might be right under your nose.

Dr. Taz Bhatia calls them "kitchen cures."  The founder of the Atlanta Center for Holistic and Integrative Medicine says they're simple fixes you probably already have around the house.

Say you wake up with a sore throat, she says.

"One of my favorites is simply sipping on hot tea,” Dr. Taz says. “But specifically hot tea with a little bit of honey in it."

Mix a teaspoon or two of honey into any kind of then then sip it.  Honey has some germ-fighting properties.

"But I think really what it's doing is it sort of coats the back of the throat and, as it coats the throat, you get relief from the sore aching throat,” she says.

If you overdo it at the gym and have muscle pain, there’s a fix for that.

"A really cheap easy home remedy is to us Epsom salts,” says Dr. Taz. “Epsom salts are made of a salt basically made from magnesium and what we think is happening there is that magnesium can, to a certain extent, penetrate and soothe achy muscles. So you can think about taking a bath in it. You can think about soaking in it every day."

For an even faster fix, she says, mix a couple of drops of magnesium oil into a carrier oil like olive or coconut oil -- then rub that into sore muscles.

For indigestion, or acid reflux, she say, try aloe vera juice.

"Taking an ounce or two ounces of aloe vera juice has a coating effect on the esophagus,” she says.  “(It) sort of just coats the esophagus, helping prevent heartburn and reflux."

And then next time you have a toothache and can't get to a dentist, think cloves.

“Clove oil has been handed down for thousands of years as a remedy for toothaches,” Dr. Tax explains. “So putting just a tiny bit of clove oil where you have a toothache can kind of manage your pain.”

But you should probably still get to the dentist.