How to fight off a cold quickly!

[IzzyJ]

EEk i'm sick!!! can feel a cold coming on!

anyone got some kick arse remedies to get rid of a cold?

someone has suggested a glass of vodka, straight, and wrap myself in a doona and sweat it out but i don't drink!!!! lol.

[JVo]

Good thing you don't drink, because alcohol is a bad idea anyway. Alcohol makes you dehydrated. You want to stay hydrated.

Drinking plenty of fluids and getting lots of rest are what you need. You'll probably be a sick for a few days....but hopefully, you'll be better in no time.

Vitamin C and echinacea are debated remedies. Doesn't hurt to try 'em if you want to.

[Komadori]

Good thing you don't drink, because alcohol is a bad idea anyway. Alcohol makes you dehydrated. You want to stay hydrated.

Drinking plenty of fluids and getting lots of rest are what you need. You'll probably be a sick for a few days....but hopefully, you'll be better in no time.

Vitamin C and echinacea are debated remedies. Doesn't hurt to try 'em if you want to.

^^^^right on the dot.


OJ - Water - OJ - Water seems to do me well. I also use cold eeze (zinc) if it's just the beginnings of a cold. Plenty of rest. Oh, and for some reason, spicy food helps me (although I love spicy food anyway)... Instead of typical chicken soup, I tend towards tom kha (Thai chicken coconut soup). It's comfort food, too. Be sure to eat, even if you don't feel up to it, because your body needs the cals to fight off the bug.

xx

[Sunshine143]

Water, vitamins, and Afrin!!! It works sooo well for me.

[Keltron]

in addition to the obvious things like water, multivitamins and antioxidants, garlic and ginger will help you tremendously. Try this:

chop a few cloves of garlic and equal amounts of ginger.
Add it to a small pot of about a cup of water and bring to a boil.
Once it starts to boil, turn the down to med/low, throw in a green tea bag [optional] and let it simmer for about 10/15 minutes.
Then pour it into a glass and mix the juice of a lemon plus a bit of honey.

You can use a strainer to strain out the chunks of garlic and ginger but I usually just man up and take it chunk-and-all for good measure. The garlic will make you drowsy so the best thing to do is to throw on a sweater and a beanie and take a nap. You'll wake up sweaty and stinky but feeling like a million bucks.

TRUST ME!

[NightSprite]

Slam the vitamin C! I take 4000mg a day and if I feel a cold coming on I up it to 6000mg. I haven't been sick in ages though and I give all the credit to vitamin C.

[JVo]

Slam the vitamin C! I take 4000mg a day and if I feel a cold coming on I up it to 6000mg. I haven't been sick in ages though and I give all the credit to vitamin C.

I haven't gotten sick in awhile either. I think maybe it has to do with healthy eating. (Not sure if the regular exercise helps too(?).)

[IzzyJ]

awesome thanks everyone!!

i don't usually get sick haven't had a simple cold in a LOOOOOOOOOONG time but recently i've had a nasty viral infection and so my immune system isn't at its best.

don't wanna get worse so i'll be mixing some ginger and garlic potion and popping panadol and vitamin c like there's no tomorrow.

will let you know if it works!

[LoveANurse]

karvol caps (or anything similar) will help loosen mucus and get the infection out before it gets worse, dont take cold and flu tabs yet cause they'll just dry you up and keep any mucus there to develop into a worse cold.

[cawagner01]

You may want to try Airborne. That, along with Alkazelzer (sp) Plus seems to do the trick for me.

[Faith Fitness]

Most helpful thread! lol just got the sniffles .. VITAMIN C IT IS!!!!!

[Mindi912]

Good thing you don't drink, because alcohol is a bad idea anyway. Alcohol makes you dehydrated. You want to stay hydrated.

Drinking plenty of fluids and getting lots of rest are what you need. You'll probably be a sick for a few days....but hopefully, you'll be better in no time.

Vitamin C and echinacea are debated remedies. Doesn't hurt to try 'em if you want to.

and some honey, lemon and ginger to this and you are good to go.

[aramis_is]

Echinacea is what I take when I feel one coming.
Tastes like crap but seems to help.

And a hell load of oranges.

[javyn]

Megadose Vitamin C. 3 grams a day here, and when I'm sick, which isn't often anymore, I bump it up to 10+ grams, seriously.

The trick with Vitamin C is you dose it to bowel tolerance, which is, keep taking it until you get diarrhea. Once your stools are loose, decrease the dose by 1 gram, and continue taking that.

Loose stools is your body's way off letting you know it has enough C. The more sick you are, the more C you will be able to tolerate.

Zinc is a great idea too, and anyone who lifts weights should be taking it anyway.

[Mindi912]

Echinacea is what I take when I feel one coming.
Tastes like crap but seems to help.

And a hell load of oranges.

it's too late to start taking vit C once you have a cold, you should take it all the time.

[mavrick77]

hope you dont catch what i got, i think something is going around....i have been sick for 2 weeks now...and everytime i think I am getting better....i fall back down. last night at week 2 I had a horrible headache, hot flashes, follwed by chills, and then diziness and nasuea.... fun times....

[Keltron]

hope you dont catch what i got, i think something is going around....i have been sick for 2 weeks now...and everytime i think I am getting better....i fall back down. last night at week 2 I had a horrible headache, hot flashes, follwed by chills, and then diziness and nasuea.... fun times....

That usually happens to me when I THINK I'm better and go back to my regular routine. Whenever you think you're back at 100%, give it a few more days of resting w/o training, keeping warm and staying extra hydrated. Hope you're better soon.

[JVo]

I've also read that Vitamin C really only helps people whose bodies are under a great deal of stress....like coal miners and marathon runners.

[NightSprite]

The trick with Vitamin C is you dose it to bowel tolerance, which is, keep taking it until you get diarrhea. Once your stools are loose, decrease the dose by 1 gram, and continue taking that.

Loose stools is your body's way off letting you know it has enough C. The more sick you are, the more C you will be able to tolerate.

Yep, that's another benifit of Vitamin C. Keeps things moving!

[javyn]

Or bodybuilders....or even office workers under any sort of physical or mental stress. Everyone should take it.

I've also read that Vitamin C really only helps people whose bodies are under a great deal of stress....like coal miners and marathon runners.

[Mindi912]

I thought Vit C was water soluble so you pee it out before it would your bowels or am I missing something?

[javyn]

What Dr. Linus Pauling, the father of molecular biology and vitamin C had to say on the issue:

Linus Pauling wrote the book, "How to Live Longer and Feel Better". (He also wrote "Vitamin C and the Common Cold") . I had heard of Linus Pauling and since living longer and feeling better sounded desirable, I bought the book. I was captivated. Pauling presents the case for Vitamin C supplementation so well and backs it up with so much evidence that this is a book I highly recommend.

To find out what Linus Pauling, 2-time Nobel Prize laureate, thought about vitamin C supplementation, let's look at an excerpt from an interview with Linus Pauling and Tony Edwards for QED BBC Television.
Q: What do you feel about the major criticism that anything over 100mg of vitamin C is a waste of money and goes down the drain because it's eliminated by the body?

A: The evidence shows that this is just not true. I myself, 20 years ago or more, read this statement, probably made by Fred Stare, professor then at Harvard School of Public Health, and I decided to check. I was taking 10 grams per day of vitamin C. I collected my urine for 24 hours and analyzed it myself for the vitamin C content.

Instead of nearly 10,000mg being eliminated in the urine, 9850mg, I found only 1,500mg, 15% of the dose that I was taking during this trial, so the statement just is not true. Of course, some of the ingested ascorbate remains in the intestinal contents and doesn't get into the blood stream. It may be as much as 1/3.

Some evidence indicates that perhaps as much as 1/3 remains in the intestinal contents. Well, this does good, protecting the lower bowel against cancer by destroying carcinogens that are present in the fecal material and also does good because of the laxative effect of bringing water into the bowel so that the volume of the waste material is larger.

There's also a smaller surface area which helps speed up the process of elimination of this material. The rest of it, 2/3 perhaps 6.5 grams when I was taking 10 grams a day, gets into the blood stream but only 1.5 grams is eliminated in the urine.

So we can ask what happens to the other 5 grams? The answer I'm sure, in fact we have direct experimental evidence for it, is that vitamin C is rapidly converted into other substances, oxidation products and these other substances, these oxidation products have been shown to have greater value against cancer than vitamin C itself.

So if you take large doses of vitamin C you produce large amounts of these other substances, the value of which is still under investigation. We have been studying it for fifteen years.

Q: How do you decide how much vitamin C is right for you and, if you take 3 grams should it be split throughout the day?

In my opinion adults should be taking at least 2 grams a day. There is much evidence about increased health with 2 grams a day, and of course even more with 4 or 6 grams a day. Even an extra 60mg had been shown to add value in cutting down the death rate from heart disease, cancer and other diseases. Now my feeling is as people grow older they ought to be increasing their vitamin C and perhaps they should follow the policy that I have followed of increasing the intake.

It can be either one chunk, one dose in the morning, or even better 3 doses throughout the day, increasing the intake until a laxative effect is observed, speeding up the rate of elimination of waste material from the bowel. So my suggestion is every person who wants to have the best of health should increase the intake of vitamin C to somewhat less than the amount that causes significant looseness of the bowel.

http://www.healingdaily.com/detoxifi.../vitamin-c.htm

[Mindi912]

Great read thanks Javyn.

[javyn]

No problem, I love spreading Dr. Pauling's message.

[_VL]

To save time in posting, here's a paste of my response in another similar thread, cherry pick from it...

Quite honestly, you should avoid most "cold symptom" OTCs unless in dire need of masking symptoms. The general school of thought is... for ANY cough: Tessalon perles (benzonatate)!!!!!! (An old homeopathic trick that even many many mainstream docs still swear by... you can pick them up at any pharmacy.) For all other symptoms: zinc has questionable efficacy but if you use it should be started within 24 hrs of onset of symptoms. You can't beat good ole' saline nasal drops, salt water gargle, hot tea w/honey and lemon, chicken soup, lots and lots of fluids, and plenty of rest if possible.

[RaeMe]

Slam the vitamin C! I take 4000mg a day and if I feel a cold coming on I up it to 6000mg. I haven't been sick in ages though and I give all the credit to vitamin C.

I agree! As soon as I feel the fever coming on I take Vitamin C along with some Advil and plenty of rest. I'll continue this for a few days and it almost always keeps the cold at bay.

[Keltron]

salt water gargle

x2. My uncle would always tell me to snort salt water up my nose when I was a kid. I always thought he was crazy until I tried it once. Worked like a charm.

[martina92685]

it's too late to start taking vit C once you have a cold, you should take it all the time.

Bingo!!!

Oh and you asked me this before and I never answered - yes, I am eating snow in my picture.

[javyn]

Even better....Jala Neti!

Since I started practicing Jala Neti about 5 years ago, my chronic sinusitis has completely disappeared.

http://www.jalanetipot.com/

x2. My uncle would always tell me to snort salt water up my nose when I was a kid. I always thought he was crazy until I tried it once. Worked like a charm.

[IzzyJ]

Even better....Jala Neti!

Since I started practicing Jala Neti about 5 years ago, my chronic sinusitis has completely disappeared.

http://www.jalanetipot.com/

that is bizarre!!!!! I wanna try it! wonder if it would help with snoring too?