Here we are again at the season of coughs and colds, you know the feeling, your nose starts to tingle, your throat feels a little dry and raspy and before you know it you have a full blown cold.
There is an old saying that if you treat a cold it will last a week and if left untreated it will last seven days. There is some truth in that saying, colds are what we call a self-limiting illness, usually a cold will go on its own after seven to ten days. But that doesn’t mean that you have to suffer if you do get a cold.
Will it ever happen? Will a cure be found for the common cold? Is there ever going to be a magic bullet that will zap a cold at the first sign? Who knows, scientists have been researching the common cold for a very long time and they are no nearer to finding a cure. That said there are things you can do to help yourself.
There are herbal remedies that are able to boost your immune system so that it is able to fight off the hundreds of different cold viruses that are lurking about just waiting for the opportunity to invade your body.
Once a cold develops, the viruses very quickly reproduce until you have billions in your nose, throat and lungs.
Herbal remedies fight colds in a few different ways, the first is to actually help your body to fight these viruses before they ever get a chance to multiply and develop into a cold.
You may have noticed that you often come into contact with people who have colds but you didn’t develop one, why is that?. How is it that one time you seem to be immune to colds and another time, Wham! you get a cold but don’t remember coming into contact with anyone who had a cold. This is all down to your immune system.
There are a lot of factors involved in having a healthy immune system, one common culprit for suppressing the immune system is stress. So what can you do to try to keep your immune system in top form, some things are just common sense. Eating a healthy diet, getting plenty of rest and exercising regularly, all of these things will help reduce stress and boost your immune system.
There are several remedies that are worth keeping in your medicine cupboard, one of these is Echinacea purpurea. Echinacea can be taken as a tea, capsules, tinctures or tablets, the dose is dependant on the product you take. Do not exceed the recommended dose for the make you are using. Also do not take Echinacea daily as it looses its immune boosting power if taken too often. To help prevent colds take Echinacea for five to six days then have two or three days off, this way you will still get the immune boosting power of this herb.
When you have a cold the strategy is very different. If you are unfortunate enough to develop a cold then take Echinacea every hour or two for at least two days. Depending on the severity of your cold you can take this dose for four days. Then drop the dose down to three times a day until your cold has gone.
So what else can you take to fight your cold. If you have a cough then there is nothing better than garlic, garlic has antiviral, antibiotic and antifungal properties. Unfortunately it is the allicin (the part that makes garlic small) in the garlic that has most of the medicinal properties.
The reason garlic is so good for any chest problems is the fact that the allicin is excreted out of the body via the lungs, therefore taking all of the antiviral and antibiotic properties where it is needed. Don’t worry if you don’t like the taste of garlic, just rub a couple of cloves onto the bottom of your feet, and hey presto in a short time your breath will smell of garlic, wonderful isn’t it.
The mucus membranes of the respiratory tract can get very inflamed when you have a cold, drink ginger tea for this, it will reduce the inflammation and help open up the nasal passages.
There are several supplements that are worth a mention, they are vitamin C, vitamin B complex and a really good multivitamin can all help you fight your cold. After your cold has gone it is a good idea to carry on with these supplements to help build your immune system back up.