The six best ways of fighting a cold.

Cough, sneeze, shiver and shake.  Tis the season of the cold.  If we are afflicted, what is best to do?

1. 

   Go to bed.  If we feel bad enough to go to bed, then that is where we should be.  This helps the body fight the virus.  We feel awful because this is our body telling us it needs to rest so it can spend its vital energy fighting pathogens.  The linked blog goes into details.

2. If you have a fever, let it run its course – unless it’s dangerously high, of course.  The temperature is up to fry the pathogens; they don’t like it hot and they die in the heat.  So lie there, shivering, shaking and feeling utterly wretched, but with the small, sane part of the mind shouting, ‘Die, bugs!!’.
3. Do not take cold medications.  They merely prolong the agony.  You want a fever and you want to feel awful.  If we feel better, we tend to get up and get busy.  This does not help our natural defences. Also non-steroidal anti-inflammatories such as ibuprofen depress our natural immune system. If we are unfortunate enough to have a sore throat, wrap a soft scarf around it and gently rub the scarf into the throat.  This nice sensation will override the pain.
4. Drink plenty of water.   Keep yourself hydrated.  Especially if you have a fever.  Getting dehydrated right now will make that headache even worse.  Drink the water a few sips at a time to enable full absorption.
5.  If you get a cough, relax your scalenes.  These are muscles around the front of the throat that lift the head off the floor.  If you open out your hand and press into the front of your throat, if they are tight, they will feel tender to the touch.  When the scalenes are tight, they make us cough, even if we are not ill.  Forward head carriage tightens them up, incidentally.  So if we catch a cold, the best way of preventing a dry cough developing is learn how to relax the scalenes, which will relax the throat and stop that cough.  And even if we have a productive cough, we still don’t want to cough more than is absolutely necessary.
6. Nose blowing: during the day make this as gentle and as infrequent as possible.  The more we blow the nose, the more it will need blowing. If you don’t believe me, try it.  At night, horrid as it sounds, screw up a couple of bits of tissue and poke them into the ends of your nose to block it up.  We then have to mouth breathe – which, with a bunged up nose we have to anyway – and I completely agree that this is also utterly horrible.  But in the morning when we wake, with a vile mouth, and remove the tissues, hey presto, the nose has dried up and we haven’t spent the night blowing the nose.  Hurrah.

Following these tips will dramatically shorten the length of the cold and have you back to full speed in a few days.  Ignore them and you’ll be suffering for weeks.  So a couple of days off work feeling utterly dreadful whilst it runs its course beats no days off work but being below par for a couple of weeks.  Bit of a no brainer really.