What do you do when you feel a cold coming on? how do you maintain it or keep it away?

Question

k so my throat is just a hint of scratchy and my nose is just a little stuffy.
any way to keep it from getting worse or making it go away?

Answer 1

Ok...first off ignore the first two posters, especially the first one.

"litterally flushing" out the system with tons of water seems to make perfect common sense...unless of course you have taken even the most basic anatomy and physiology classes.

There is abosolutely nothing you can do really to ward off a cold. There are tons of medications out there that claim they can, but it's BS, and they can only make such claims because they skirt around technicalities set up by the FDA and don't claim to treat any specific disease. All you really can do with a cold or flu is treat the symptoms (which is why pain relief and thera-flu are so popular hehe) and rest a lot.

Avoid like the plague any drug like Airbourne that claims to boost your immune system and/or lessen durations. Complete and total rubbish, and those who swear by such medications do so based entirely on ignorance. As if they could actually claim to measure how long a cold would last....here's a hint people, the cold you got last year isn't even the same virus, how do you even begin to compare such a thing as duration...it's not a controlled experiment, you're dealing with unknowns, you're ignorant to the virulence of each pathogen, and your other examples of success are other people who don't know jack.

Yes it's good to drink plenty of water, take a multi-vitamin, etc. These methods ensure that your body has the tools that it needs to mount an immune response. So they don't shorten or snip a cold in the bud...they just shorten what would have happened, had you been malnurished.

The hint of scratchy and slightly stuffy nose may just mean you have what could have been a cold. You may even wake up with a sore throat in the morning...As your body is making the most basic and general efforts to nuke out the virus before you get full blown sick. Basically what you are feeling is your immune system kicking in, and it may end at that.

Plenty of times people think they are coming down with allergies when it was actually a cold that got cut short. Kinda like when someone starts talking about a stomach flu, not realising that a flu is a respiratory infection.....

Anyhow, there is not much that you can do except take a multi-vitamin, drink a lot of water, and get plenty of sleep. If you get enough sleep early on you can provide a boost to your immune system that may stave off a full blown cold. Also, don't take a fever reducer just because you have a small temp. If it's floating around 101 or below, don't worry at all. People tend to make the mistake of using a fever reducer at the slightest sign of a high temp, ignorant to the fact that your immune system is more productive at that higher temp. It is moreso helpful with a bacterial infection, as bacteria thrive at set temp points (and the ones that would invade you, like your normal body temp, not the temp of a fever).

Anyhow, get plenty of rest and good luck.

Answer 2

I know you are giving advice, but I'm gonna tell you that the only thing I have ever found that took my cold sores away within one day is Bare Escentuals RareMinerals Nighttime treatment. I take the cover off the "puff" and put some in a jar, then use a q-tip to apply it in the morning and the night. If it got dry in the daytime I put a dab of Abreva on, but the last time I got a cold sore I only used the Abreva once, the cold sore was gone from the RareMinerals. I wish I would have discovered this years ago!

Answer 3

That's my sign to buy the orange juice and start going to bed early. Echinacea can help, but there are side effects and problems with other medicines, the efficacy goes down after you've been using it awhile, and you kind of have to start right away. If you wait until you are sick, it won't work.

I usually just pile on the home remedies at this point. Gargling salt water, drinking lots of tea and orange juice, and fixing a huge pot of chicken noodle soup to get me through it. And sleep. That's what your body needs more than anything right now.

Answer 4

I drink LOT'S of good ol' OJ and water.
Drinks lots of liquids !

Answer 5

I swear by Zicam. You can pick it up at any drugstore. If you use it right away, your cold won't be as bad and it will last half as long. It isn't a cure, so beware.

Answer 6

The two very best products on the market to shorten the duration of a cold are Zicam and Airborne. They must be taken at the onset for maximum effectiveness. I don't think you'd want to know how to "maintain" a cold (keep it going), would you??? Drinking a lot of water does not "flush germs" from the body.

Answer 7

A big bowl of green chile works for me. The chiles have a lot of Vitamin C and the spiciness helps promote open nasal passages.

Also, any remedy that a person believes will work seems to work.

Answer 8

I am drinking Thera-Flu right now. I'll drink about three cups today and I'll usually feel better tomorrow.

Hope it works for you.

Answer 9

wrap yourself up really warm..
drink warm water
*optional* take a little medicine
sleep
STAY OUT OF COLD

Answer 10

Take "Airbourne" it'll help fight off a cold and will shorten the duration if you do get one, also "Emergen-C", "Olive leaf extract", and drink lots of fluids. Go to the "Vitamin Shoppe" they have lots of good stuff there! Hope u feel better.