Colds are spread by a virus, so most of the crap people talk about makes no difference.  Wash your hands a lot, and never touch your eyes or nose with your hands.  Those make much more difference than diet or vitamins or whatever people talk about.

do you get more than 8 hours of sleep? do you wake up naturally?

getting good sleep has been the most helpful to me, though generally i'm disease immune. i do things like eat undercooked beef and chicken because i'm too lazy to recook it. -_-;

ironically the only time i got food poisoning was when i went to japan for vacation two years ago.

I dunno, avoiding contact with germs is pretty much impossible I think. Do you wash your hands every time you use a computer, after handling money etc? What if you work at a school. You'll be surrounded by little germ factories. When you're in good health your body just fights the germs off and you don't even notice unless there's a nasty one going around.

I'd say:
plenty of sleep.
Generally not being stressed/exhausted. So long exhausting gym routines are probably bad.
Eating a lot fruit/vegetables.
Plenty of water.
Occasional sunlight.
Fresh air.

are all important.

nadiatims wrote:

I dunno, avoiding contact with germs is pretty much impossible I think. Do you wash your hands every time you use a computer, after handling money etc? What if you work at a school. You'll be surrounded by little germ factories. When you're in good health your body just fights the germs off and you don't even notice unless there's a nasty one going around.

It's true that you get germs on you all day, and that can't be helped, and you're gonna get sick sometimes.  There is a limit to the helpfulness of washing your hands--you get diminishing returns after a certain point, and if you do it obsessively it can lead to health problems with your skin.

There are certain times where it is especially important to wash your hands; for example, any situation in which you can get fecal-oral exposure.  That's why you should wash your hands after going to the bathroom or after changing a diaper.  You should also wash your hands after dealing with sick people to any degree.  You should also wash your hands in situations where you could give germs of fecal-oral exposure to others, such as when feeding children or preparing food that will be eaten without cooking. 

It's true that the general state of your immune system is important, but the problem is that everything that affects your immune system is so wishy-washy.  Thus, the best general advice that can be given about your immune system is 'maintain your general good health.'

So the grand total of useful advice is:
Wash your hands periodically (especially when dealing with sick people or being around feces)
Don't touch your face with your hands
Try not to be near sick people
Maintain your general health

That's really about it.

Last edited by Tzadeck (2011 December 01, 9:16 pm)

In Japan, the government's recommendation is to wash your hands upon returning home and to gargle water (often with antimicrobial drops added). People also wear masks to prevent spreading or catching colds while in public. Also, try to refrain from touching your face as the behavior is unhealthy and a bit uncouth.

I remember seeing an interesting device on TV once. It was a syringe with an attachment that went into/against one nostril and allowed one to flush their nose with water (maybe a weak saline solution). The water went in one nostril and came out the other so long as one closed the passage between their nose and mouth like when diving.

Well to prevent catching a cold, a cheap N95 mask would probably work fine. As for the nose thing, I think it was designed with allergen removal in mind.

On gargling:

http://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-t … _help.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16242593


As a remedy:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cold-remedies/ID00036

Last edited by Oniichan (2011 December 01, 9:33 pm)

do you go to sleep at 3am or something? lol.
I hear that going to sleep early, by early I mean 10pm, boosts your immune system and allows your brain to release growth hormones and all that good stuff that it wouldn't release if you went to sleep after 2am.

so anyways you should try that if you go to sleep late.

I would say don't spray with spray/Lysol/Pine Sol/whatever..... because they have mad chemicals that's bad for you (neurotoxic, etc,etc)... you shouldn't be inhaling that or touching that every day. don't be air-pollutin with that shit

just use white distilled vinegar for the germs... it's cheaper and safer and probably more effective. yes it smells like a salad for 3 hrs but it's so much better for your health

White distilled vinegar is a popular household cleanser, effective for killing most ... effective for killing most mold, bacteria, and germs, due to its level of acidity.

don't tell me you're too much of a germaphobe that you only trust the toxic cleaning products

Last edited by howtwosavealif3 (2011 December 01, 9:53 pm)

As a public health professional, maybe I can provide some insight.

All of the advice about frequent hand-washing, not touching your face, staying away from sick people, etc. has been great. Good hustle! Also, make sure you get your yearly flu vaccine, if you can.

Raschaverak - do you have asthma or some other kind of chronic upper respiratory condition? This will often make you more susceptible to upper respiratory infections. Also, if you live somewhere with particularly bad air pollution, this will cause you to be sick more often.  My best friend is an asthmatic who lives in Beijing, and she is sick with colds and flu ALL THE TIME.

Another thing to consider are your tonsils. Do you still have them? The friend mentioned above had to take a semester off in college because she was constantly chronically sick and weak. She saw multiple specialists (one doctor even insisted on testing her for HIV, even though she had never been sexually active or taken drugs with needles) and no one could figure it out until she went to the ENT, who diagnosed her with "chronic cryptic tonsillitis." Basically, her tonsils were formed in a way that constantly harbored and unleashed repeated infections on her (we're talking ten episodes of strep throat in one year). After having them removed, she was fine (except for her yearly flu).

If you really are exercising regularly and eating a well-balanced diet like you say, then I suggest you look at other factors. A major one (which has already been pointed out here) is sleep. Also, you might look into alternative forms of exercise which are less intense - they say yoga is very good for maintaining good body function, particularly the immune system. I am not sure there is much scientific evidence to back that up, but it can't hurt, I suppose.

Cardiovascular exercises for 30 minutes a day. At least 3 times a week. It needs to vigorous enough to raise your pulse and make you breath a little hard.

Last edited by vix86 (2011 December 01, 10:59 pm)

I haven't had a cold (sore troath, coughing and sneezing, running nose) the last two years. Used to have a cold around November, and then a strong one around February. To top it off it seems my system grew allergic to the cold virus, so I had a nasty allergy at about the same time or shortly before! Swollen tongue, swollen whatever-that-thing-is-at-the-back-of-my-mouth-that-dangles-down.

I noticed enough of a pattern to confirm myself that enough Vitamin D cured it.

Of course you don't want to take medical advice from random blogs. So I did some research, and eventually decided to try high doses of Vitamin D, after I read the toxicity on Wikipedia:

Wikipedia wrote:

(...) sustained intake of more than 1250 micrograms/day (50,000 IU) can produce overt toxicity after several months

The trick is, multi vitamins are worthless for this. Most resources I read recommending Vitamin D as prevention for the cold suggested doses of 2500+ IU per day.

The last multi vitamins I bought have 5 μg, I think that's ~200 IU, and they cost upwards of 15 €!

The "D-Cure" supplements I bought cost 4 € and have 4 doses of 25000 IU!

Take one per 10 day as a base prevention that's a minimum of 2500 IU per day.

Take one per week at those times you know you used to get a rough cold.

If you suspect you are starting a cold (headaches, fever...) then you can safely take one high dose (25000 IU) for a couple days, and BOOOM it's gone. I did this once.

I don't mind so much to feel weak for a few days. I mean, I never went to a doctor for a cold. Just took an aspirin for fever, and then sometimes pills for the sore throat.

The thing that sucked about colds, is that my nose would run for days, and then it would be red, ache, and then get scars because of rubbing it all the time.

So screw the cold. 4 € a month o_O ...

Could probably even skip prevention and just take a 25000 IU dose for a couple days when a cold shows up. But I read that Vitamin D can also lift mood during winter (link) so figured I'd take it through the winter.

PS: The most thorough articles I read about Vitamin D and Influenza also suggested getting a blood test to verify if you have enough or too much. I don't take anywhere near as much as they suggsted, as I wrote above the most I take on a regular basis would be 25000 / 7 (one high dose per week) which is less than 4000 IU. And as soon as spring comes back and there is more sun, I stop it. Use your head. I am not a doctor..

PPS: Then again, I also went to India for 3 months in 2010. Maybe I gained a +10 permanent skill increase to Immune System. Who knows. Haha. Just joking! More seriously.. if you want to try this I believe it's very safe, but it also will take a couple year before you can really attest that it works for you. Although some people get colds during the summer too, so that gives more opportunities to see how well it works.

IceCream wrote:

According to some sources, too much excersise can be bad for your immune system. http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/injuryprevention.

I don't think many of us are capable of doing continuous high-intensity endurance workouts for over 90 minutes, so we should be okay on that end.