common cold

[mark pearce]

what makes you feel better quickly when you are suffering from a cold and while I'm here, how can you stop yourself getting a cold in the first place?

[WaldoMcFroog]

Lots of vitamin C is the best bet. A cold is a viral infection and short of locking yourself away, there's very little you can do to stop yourself getting colds. Some poeple say don't go out in the cold, or with insufficent clothes on, but this is pap. You cannot get a virus from a temperature!! Since the common cold virus is a mutagenic virus (i.e. like the HIV virus, it constantly changes form), it is as good as impossible to develop an effective preventative medicine - which is why those available are all curative! Your best hope of curing a cold is to ride it out and keep yourself full of nutrients since you need energy to create the antibodies to fight the disease. However, if you get another cold, those anti-bodies are likely to be pretty uselss, since the germ will have mutated again. Grrr!

[ravenhair]

One word: Echinacea. Buy the liquid, take drops in water two or three times a day between October and April and you'll be sorted.

[mikewith]

It's not a cure but it makesyou feel better: my mother-in-law's (copyright applied for) Hot Toddy: a huge slug of cheap* whiskey, generous spoonful of runny honey, lemon juice and the rest of the cup filled with boiling water. *Who knows - or cares - if expensive whiskey does the trick?!

[coemgen]

Keep your fluids up and top up with vitamin c. Also recommended are liberal quantities of onions and garlic, or even better a hot curry to clear your sinuses.

[Stewart]

I find the worst symptom is the blocked nose. I can normally cope with all the other things as long as my nose is clearish. Otrovine nasal spray has been the most successful at overcoming this bya long way, however I am convinced that they changed it a year or so back and it now doesn't work quite as well as it used to.