Can you fight the common cold?
There isn’t much in life that is more inconvenient than waking up with the dreaded common cold. Blocked nose, sore throat, headache and just generally feeling disgusting doesn’t exactly help us be productive, yet the expectation of most people is to push through the pain and just get on with life.
There are a few myths and misconceptions about the common cold, so here are the facts about the common cold, how your body fights it, and some ways that you can help support your immune system and get back to tip top shape.
What is it?
The reason that you can’t take antibiotics for a cold is because it’s a viral infection of your upper respiratory tract. It usually clears up within a week or two because that’s how long it takes for your body to create the antibodies to fight it off.
When the discharge from your nose becomes thick and green or yellow that’s a sign of the infection being forced out of your body.
The common cold is generally pretty harmless despite how awful it can make you feel, but if symptoms persist for more than a couple of weeks you should consult your gp as it could be something more serious.
Some of the myths
Vitamin C – People around the world often decide to start taking vitamin-C supplements when it’s cold season to try to reduce their chances of catching the dreaded bug, but research surrounding vitamin-C and the common cold has found that taking vitamin-C doesn’t actually reduce your chances of catching a cold.
However, research is suggesting that taking vitamin-C when you have a cold could potentially reduce both the severity and the duration of a cold, so even if you were taking vitamin-C for the wrong reason, it may still be helping!
Being cold makes you catch a cold – Going outside wearing shorts and a t-shirt in the middle of winter isn’t the best advice, and in some countries it’s borderline insane! By doing it though you’re not actually increasing the risk of catching a cold.
Being exposed to the elements can weaken your immune system which could make you more likely to catch a cold, but the only way to get a cold is to pick up one of the literally hundreds of viruses that cause cold like symptoms, not just by going out into the cold unprotected.
Feed a cold, starve a fever – This is quite a popular myth, but it isn’t true. Your body uses a lot of energy to create the immune defence needed to destroy a virus, not by not eating you could well be making it more difficult for your body to recover from the virus.
The solution is quite simple. Eat healthy food when you’re hungry and drink water when you’re thirsty. This will give you the best chance of recovering from your cold as soon as possible.
Can you sweat out a cold? – The short answer is no, you can’t. Whilst it is safe to do exercise while you’re sick, doing anything that’s overly strenuous will cause a stress response in your body that could aggravate your symptoms and make you feel even worse.
Light exercise can even give you temporary relief from cold symptoms, so feel free to go for a brisk walk or light jog, but don’t absolutely smash yourself at the gym.
When you’re sick, you should do whatever helps you feel better. If that’s staying super toasty under a pile of blankets or keeping up a workout routine then do that, but you have to be more mindful of the current state that your body is in.
You’re not contagious when symptoms are showing - This is totally false and cannot be stressed enough. Viruses are brilliant at spreading, it’s the main purpose for their existence! Although you can be contagious before symptoms start to show, you are definitely still contagious until all of your symptoms are gone.
Having a cold is even more of a reason to either start or continue with good hygiene practices. Things like washing your hands, sneezing into a tissue and not sharing cups or cutlery can reduce your chances of infecting someone else, or becoming infected yourself.
How to treat a cold
With so many myths and so much information out there about the common cold and how to treat it, it can be difficult to separate the fact from the fiction.
Despite feeling the need to continue on with your normal life as if nothing is wrong, the best medicine for a common cold is rest. Hydration and nutrition are also key to recovering as soon as possible.
You can take cold and flu medicine to try to ease symptoms, but just because you’re not sneezing and blowing your nose every ten seconds, that doesn’t mean that you can’t still spread your germs!
It’s hard to feel good and comfortable when you have a cold, so you should do everything in your power to help yourself feel better and be able to attack the day as you normally would. Although you’re definitely not dying when you have a cold it can sometimes feel like that!
If and when you’re unfortunate to pick up a cold, try not to give it to anyone else and have a good supply of tissues handy and make sure to remember what is fact and what is myth!