So I’m hoping it’s allergies, but I may be coming down withI have a cold. I figured it was a good time to do a little research and update my assumptions with facts. I found out some interesting things and thought I’d share as we head into cold and flu season.
Prevention
There are two proven ways to help prevent colds:
- Vigorously wash your hands every 2-3 hours and avoid touching your face, especially your eyes, nose, and mouth. You can also use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer like Purell. However, this just kills what’s on your hands, it doesn’t provide any protection afterward.
- Get a full night’s rest. People who get 7 hours of sleep or less are three times more likely to contract a cold than those who get 8 or more hours!
As for vitamin C helping, there doesn’t seem to be strong evidence supporting that. However, It appears a vitamin D deficiency will make you more susceptible. But you should be taking a daily multivitamin anyway.
And you might have already heard this, but staying out of the cold won’t help. In fact, one of the reasons there are ore colds during winter is that everyone is staying out of the cold, and staying inside in close proximity to each other. There are fewer places to pick up viruses outside.
Treatment
Again, the answer here is simple:
- Stay hydrated. I know some like taking tea, but tea is a diuretic, which can dehydrate you. Just drink lots of water.
- Get lots of rest. You’re gonna be tired, anyway.
- Take an analgesic (Tylenol, Advil, etc.) for fever
Beyond this, nothing is really proven. Normally when I’m first getting a cold, I’m not sure if it’s a cold or allergies, so I take an antihistamine – Claritin. If that doesn’t help, I know I’m getting a cold. The only antihistamines that help are the old school ones that make you drowsy (like Sudafed Cough & Cold or “Nighttime”), as they affect the sinuses directly. Unfortunately, anything that says “may make you drowsy” puts me a fugue state for 36-48 hours and does more harm than good. You may have better luck.
Another surprise was the harm milk causes – or rather, doesn’t. I was always told that milk makes mucus and phlegm, so never drink it when you have a cold or an allergy attack. Now, you can certainly be allergic to milk or dairy products. But a couple studies have been done to see whether milk increases mucus production during a cold and they did not find a link.
They did find something interesting, however. Both studies asked participants whether they believed drinking milk would make things worse. One study found that those who did had higher mucus production regardless of whether or not they drank milk. The other study found no connection, either, but noticed a psychological connection to the texture of the beverage. Their participants thought they were making things worse even when they drank soy milk. My guess is that some people have overactive sinuses, and it seems like any little thing you do makes them worse. But if the thought of drinking milk seems nasty when you’ve got a cold, skipping it won’t hurt anything.
Why hope it’s allergies? I would rather have a cold for a few days, than living with allergies for weeks (every year).
With my old job, which was laid back and had sick days, a cold wasn’t a big deal. But as an independent consultant whose time is stretched across two projects with tight deadlines, I’d rather have the allergies. For me, allergies means a runny nose and I’m used to that, having them most of my life. A cold means being tired most of the time and hence getting paid less or not at all. “Luckily” I had a cold a couple months ago, so this one is much less severe. The last one included a fever, coughing, headaches, sore throat, etc., and lasted a week. Now I’m just congested and tired.
Oh. For me, allergies is completely sealed nose, sinus headaches, and itchy eyes. Three weeks straight.
That sucks. I must say, Claritin has pretty much solved my allergy issues, unless I’m faced with several cats all at once. Too much pussy gives me asthma.
Agree with all of your behaviors to treat a cold: hydration and rest. But do you really want to bring down a fever? I thought that fever was the body’s way of destroying invading germs. But I guess that is incorrect; otherwise you’d be destroying good cells along with the bad. So why do we get fevers? Is it just a way for the body to disable us so that we get the rest? You’d think we would be smart enough to rest on our own, but I recall that even Jim Henson passed away from a perfectly treatable infection. Just because we know what to do does not mean we’ll do it.
Way to go and disable us, body fever !!!
And it makes us thirsty as well, forcing us to hydrate. Two for two.
My guess is that any good a fever does is offset by its ill side effects, which include headaches, body aches, nightmares, and at the higher range, delirium, brain damage, and death. Adults can’t take as high a temperature as children, either. It seems that no matter what, that cold is going to take 7-10 days to work its way through your system, so you should just do what you can to alleviate the symptoms.
Along those lines, cough medicine can help, too, primarily if it contains guaifenesin. It’s what’s in Mucinex, and it’s an ingredient in most other cough medicines (Robitussin), having been FDA approved since the ’50s and in use since the 1500s. But unless I already have a cough, I wouldn’t take it as a decongestant because I’d rather be stuffed up than have a runny nose. Maybe that’s just me.
While dairy may not be a culprit in increased mucus production, foods with a high acid content are. So if you’re in the habit of drinking OJ by the quart to get rid of a cold and get your vitamin C, you might be defeating the purpose…