What do you use to get over a cold?

[Guest SuperBru]

Ginger tea. Works like a charm!

[Philip Chubb]

Also most colds only last a few days anyway, without any special treatment, right?

Depends on the person. I've had some athletes where it wouldn't go away due to the volume of training they had to keep up (fighters).

[acrobatlegend]

Freshly squeezed lemon juice has always been my go to. Anytime I feel sick, over trained or just run down, I squeeze 1-2 lemons with a lemon squeezer and it just makes me feel better. 

 

I prefer a big bag of organic lemons because while they are smaller, the skin is thinner so in the end you get more juice. Then, I take the squeezed lemon halfs and either 1) cut a piece off and put it in my tea or 2) rub them all over my steak, chicken or whatever other meat if I am cooking at the time. 

 

I love lemons!!! 

Also, raspberries and strawberries are something I particularly seek out when I have a cold. I find that it is hard to eat something like steak and potatoes (even if it is your favorite thing to eat) when you are sick, but gorging on berries, lemons is easy. My body accepts them well. 

[Erik Rissanen]

We have a saying here in Sweden: "If you don't treat a cold, it lasts a week. If you treat it right, it only lasts seven days".

 

The recommendations from medical professionals here are to take simple measures to reduce the risk to get infected. Wash your hands frequently, and after being in public places. Don't touch your nose, eyes or mouth. Avoid being close to others with a cold.

 

I've also heard the overtraining warning, but only as hearsay in fitness circles. I'm not saying it's wrong, but I never got it from medical professionals. Does anyone have references? I would love to know about them.

[acrobatlegend]

I've also heard the overtraining warning, but only as hearsay in fitness circles. I'm not saying it's wrong, but I never got it from medical professionals. Does anyone have references? I would love to know about them.

I'll just say I have definitely noticed a pattern in myself of catching colds/getting sick when I over-train.

[Karl Kallio]

Amongst the people I know I notice a pattern of enduring heavier than normal training the weeks prior to a competition, enduring the stress and long hours of a competition then getting a cold right after.  That probably works out to the same thing.  Stress hormones can keep you going for a while, but not forever, and when they flush out of your system your immune response is sluggish, opening the door to cold germs that are always around.

[Jordan Bruce]

For those of you interested in megadosing* vitamin D and the flu check out the following paper (10/3/2012): http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1367547

 

Quick recap:  18-month randomized controlled trail in which participants were given either placebo or 200,000 IU D3 monthly for two months and then 100,000 IU monthly for  the following 16 months.  Participants (n=322) began the study with mean 25-OHD levels at 29 ng/mL.  Particpants in the intervention group had sustained mean 25-OHD levels at > 48 ng/mL throughout the study.  

 

Conclusion:  Megadosing* of D3 did not significantly reduce incidence or severity of URTI's (upper respiratory tract infections)

 

*Megadosing defined as 10x RDA (600 IU for individuals aged 1-70)

 

Also:  D3 toxicity is indeed a real thing and can cause all sorts of nastiness.  It does, however, take some determined, long-term megadosing to get there.   

[Philip Chubb]

The study is flawed for my claim if that's what it's being posted for. Also, that amount is pretty low. What were their levels brought to?

Also, vitamin d toxicity is real, but most people will never reach it. People have dosed 100,000 a day for weeks at a time and still been unable to become toxic.

There's a big difference between these studies and science and real life. That's why I don't wait for science to validate everything.

[Erik Rissanen]

There is an interesting article in a recent Scientific American issue. The conclusion is that the data tends to suggest that suplementing with anti-oxidants is harmful to health rather than beneficial.

 

There article is here, but you need to pay or subscribe to read it in full:

 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-free-radical-theory-of-aging-dead

 

I read it in the print edition, which I did not save after I finished reading it.

 

Edit: This article is not about vitamin D, but I found it interesting on the topic because it's so common to think that anti-oxidants (like vitamin C) can help one against a cold.

[Philip Chubb]

There's a study on everything proving the point of whoever paid the most.

I read one where they came to the conclusion that full squats provided more benefits that half squats and that half squats were detremental to certain performance factors. At the end, they still recommended half squats... Facepalm...

I know not all studies are this flawed but a lot of them are. I will take constant experience over a funded study any day.

[Philip Chubb]

I'm not sure what you were saying in your first paragraph.

In the second, I agree. I learn primarily from experience and what actually works and doesn't work in the field.

[Joshua Naterman]

You were reading about recommendations for people who are NOT sick. You can end up utilizing a lot more vitamin C when sick, I believe up to 10x as much, but that still means you only need something like 130 mg on a day when you're sick! That's not much.

 

These studies are "only" correlational, but every single supplement except for protein, calcium, and vitamin D has been correlated with increased mortality. Some, like vitamin E, are strongly linked to specific diseases like prostate cancer.

 

The problem with the supplements is the huge, huge doses you get in a single pill.

 

We are designed to constantly be taking in plant and animal matter, getting small doses throughout the day of a wide variety of nutrients.

 

 

 

 

To make this problem very, very obvious, just imagine the difference in your insulin status between eating your carbohydrates spread out between all meals. Not too bad, right? That's what we're designed for. NOW think about taking in all 300-ish grams of carbs at once. That's a bad thing.

 

Vitamins work differently, and before anyone asks I am not going to teach a college nutrition course, so no I am not going to try and explain exactly how this works. It's very complicated, and different for every vitamin and mineral.

 

The bottom line, which is what really matters, is that large doses of these chemicals are not readily available in nature on a daily basis. Because of this, our bodies are not designed to have large daily pulses of vitamins and minerals.

 

 

 

 

In the long run, any possible damage caused is definitely not as great as the damage caused by being chronically nutrient-deficient, but the data does suggest that current multivitamin delivery systems are not mimicking the full health benefits of what we get from nature when we eat well.

[Matus Michalicka]

now everyone will cut their pills in at least 3 pieces and eat them after each meal  problem solved

[Erik Rissanen]

Joshua, yes, what you say is similar to what the article was about. I am only paraphrasing it since I don't have the copy anymore, but there were essentially three points in the article.

 

Firstly, that the supplementation with anti-oxidants has very little justification actually. The evidence for the benefits of vegetables is very solid, so people thought that it must be the anti-oxidants in the vegetables which is causing the benefits, so supplementing must be good. But for whatever reason, something appears to be wrong with that line of reasoning, but it hit popular culture anyway, without any real evidence on supplementation itself.

 

The article presented the results from a meta-analysis, which looked at many studies on the benefits of supplementation. These types of studies are very hard to do because the effects are subtle, go over a long period of time and the scientists have to rely on interviews, rather than controlled randomized trials. But the general trend was that the studies show that supplementation increases mortality.

 

The article also presented the results of a recent study on genetically modified ring worms. They had modified the worms so they did not produce the normal amount of anti-oxidants. The level of free radicals in worm tissue soared, which surprisingly made the worms live significantly longer than normal worms. When the scientists supplemented the works with anti-oxidants, their life span returned to normal. The benefit of an animal trial is that it's done under very controlled circumstances so the results or potentially more reliable. Of course, people are not worms, so it's only indicative.

 

Anyway, the jury is still out there, but to me, though not a scientist or a medical professional, I think it's better to put my effort in making sure I eat vegetables, rather than supplementing with pills. I do take an occasional multi-vitamin because I think I am at a small risk of Vitamin D deficiency. I live in Sweden, and it's really dark here in winter and I don't spend much time outdoors, and I don't eat fatty fish always on a regular basis. Just to cover my bases.

[Amon Ra]

I used to get several colds a year until I did the following -

1. Take vitamin D, vitamin C, magnesium, and zinc supplements. You can take as much as they recommend on the bottle, you don't need a lot. 

2. Every morning I brush my teeth and spend maybe ten minutes flossing and gargling.

3. I used to sleep maybe 4 to 6 hours a night, now I cut down my schedule so I can get my 8 hours.