How to Prevent the Common Cold
"From a bottle of cough syrup to missed time at work and school, the price tag of catching a cold really adds up," says researcher A. Mark Fendrick, MD, with the Consortium for Health Outcomes, Innovation, and Cost Effectiveness Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His study appears in the Archives of Internal Medicine. In it, he reports the results from a nationwide telephone survey of more than 4,000 U.S. households. Nearly 75% reported suffering from a cold within the last year, with an average of 2.5 episodes.
"A cold is the most commonly occurring illness in humans, so it was no surprise that there are approximately 500 million colds each year in the U.S.," says Fendrick. "What was a surprise is how often the public uses the health care system to treat a cold."
"Because there is no cure for the common cold it gets far less attention than many less common conditions," Fendrick says. "An intervention that would effectively prevent or treat the cold would have a huge clinical and economic impact, far greater than for chronic diseases that we hear about on a regular basis."
Wow, the last time I checked there IS a cure for the common cold, it's called a healthy immune system, unfortunately you can't make much money by helping someone build one, so our health care industry isn't interested!
- Sleep! Most research has shown that the optimal level of sound sleep a person should get a night is 8 hours. Without it your body can not fight off outside invaders such as bacteria and virus’.
- Water intake. If you are not drinking 8-10 twelve ounce glasses of purified water a day your body will have a hard time executing the crucial steps needed for a healthy immune system.
- Avoid sugar and white flour intake. In the October 1993 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine there is a study that shows “the ingestion of 100 grams of sugar will stop the production of white blood cells for six hours.” White blood cells are what fight bacteria and virus’ in the human body. Without normal white blood cell production the immune system will not function.
- Wash your hands through out the day, especially after shaking some ones hand. Use hot water and regular soap, not anti-biotic soap which weakens the immune system.
- The daily supplementation of certain vitamins, minerals, and herbs will support the immune system to ward of infection.