Dear Doctor Jahn,
I literally can’t afford to catch a cold this time of year! Too many important gigs lined up. So, what are my best chances to avoid catching one – or, if I get one (gasp!), what is my quickest way through it? I’m wondering if you will tell me anything my mother hasn’t already…
– Kitty
Dear Kitty,
If your mother is like mine it is unlikely I can do better than her, but here it goes.
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First, stay healthy: eat and drink enough, get adequate sleep, exercise regularly and avoid stress as much as possible. Stress can weaken your immune system and make you more vulnerable to the cold virus.
Second, minimize the potential for contagion: wash your hands several times a day, especially before touching your face (monitor that you don’t touch your face unnecessarily or habitually), don’t shake hands with sick people and try to avoid crowded places as much as you can.
At the risk of looking silly, cover your face with a scarf if you need to go on a crowded bus or train during rush hour. If anyone in your family (or a roommate) gets sick, minimize direct physical contact and don’t share personal items such as toiletries, dishes or cutlery.
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On the active side of prevention, take Vitamin C – about 1000 mg a day in divided doses during cold season. If a cold starts, you can increase this to 4000 mg. Other remedies such as Echinacea may also be helpful, but Vitamin C clearly is beneficial, as long as there are no contra indicatory health issues (such as kidney stones) in your history. Remedies containing Vitamin C, such as Emergen-C or Airborne, are very useful— I don’t know if you have them in the U.K., but they are effervescent tablets with vitamins and other remedies that you can drink at the onset of a cold. Once your cold starts, zinc lozenges are very useful, as are zinc nasal swabs — not as a preventive, but they do shorten the cold, making the symptoms less severe and you less contagious. (Avoid zinc nasal spray, since some patients have reported a loss of smell using the spray formulation.)
If you do get sick, stop exercising, stay warm, drink lots of fluids and let your body heal itself. You do not need antibiotics unless the viral cold leads to a secondary bacterial infection, which manifests with mucus that is green or yellow.
