Beat The Common Cold

We went to Germany last fall for a month to be there for the birth of our 8th grandchild.  Just before we left to come home the new baby's older brother developed a rip-roaring nose-running, eye-watering, misery-making cold.  Since we wouldn't be seeing him again for over 6 months I wasn't about to miss out on those last snuggles hugs and kisses so I resigned myself to getting the cold myself (with fewer immunities, small children are nature's perfect petri dish, so anyone who's around them a lot is probably going to get sick more often).  Sure enough, on the drive home from the airport I felt that first tickle in my throat that, for me, is the harbinger of a full-fledged cold coming on.  This post is about how to prevent and combat the common cold.

Before we go any further here's the disclaimer:

I am not a doctor, trained scientist, or dietician, and nothing on my blog should be treated as a medical fact or medical advice or anything other than my opinion which (I'm about to shock my children here) has occasionally been wrong.

With that out of the way I can also say that if I were a doctor, scientist, or dietician I probably wouldn't have any better advice on this topic because modern medicine still hasn't figured out how to cure the "common cold".  The main advice doctors will give you if you get a cold is to drink lots of fluids, get plenty of rest, treat the symptoms with over-the-counter medications, and let it run its course.  If you go to the doctor and insist that she/he give you something she/he may occasionally prescribe antibiotics so you'll get off her/his back, but if what you have is viral like a cold the antibiotics won't do any good so don't bother.  BTW, not only will antibiotics not help, but using them as a placebo is a bad idea because:

• They kill the good biota in your gut which are essential to good health
• The process of natural selection will ensure that the bad bugs that DO survive your antibiotics will be much more likely to pass that ability on to their posterity creating more of those nasty "superbugs" that kill people in hospitals because none of the antibiotics work on them

What is the Common Cold anyway?

The common cold is a very infectious viral disease of the upper respiratory tract. Its symptoms include a sore throat, sometimes a fever, a runny nose, coughing, and sneezing.  These symptoms usually resolve in seven to ten days, though I've had colds last 3 weeks.  The US National Institutes of Health estimate that the common cold costs the US economy over $25 Billion per year in lost productivity, and the personal costs of colds in terms of expense and suffering are untold but enormous!

Although a colds are common enough, they don't all have a single cause.  One of the reasons it's so difficult to come up with a medication to cure a cold is that there are over 200 viruses implicated as its cause.  The rhinoviruses (shown to the right) is the most common family of viruses in that group. They are also among the smallest viruses (they are only about 30 nano-meters only compared to 300 nano-meters for the smallpox virus--by contract bacteria are around 1,000 nano-meters  and a single red blood cell which is 7,000 nano-meters).  A cold's symptoms are mostly due to the body's immune response to the infection rather than to tissue destruction by the viruses themselves.  Consequently many of the drugs used to treat the symptoms essentially suppress your immune response.

What can you do to prevent a cold?

The best prevention is to wash your hands frequently with soap (you can make your own liquid hand soap - $1 for 64 ounces!) during cold season.  There is some evidence that face masks may be useful but their inconvenience makes them impractical except in acute situations.  Cold viruses are transmitted by the spread of viruses through sneezing, coughing, and touching surfaces (viruses can live up to 48 hours outside the body and they live longest on hard surfaces such as metal, plastic, wood etc.).  The other key is to maintain a healthy body.  The other key prophylactic measures you can take are to exercise regularly,  maintain good health,  and minimize mucous-causing foods (i.e. milk, refined sugars and flours etc.) since that creates a perfect medium for the viri to multiply.  In fact, if I have dessert with a meal I usually try to avoid eating it last.  I like to finish with some sort of raw vegetable like carrots to scrub everything down.

What can you do to combat a cold once you get it?

There ares some natural compounds that many people swear-by to fight colds or bring relief from their symptoms.  Examples include:

• Echinacea (an herb purported to boost the immune system)
• Mega-doses of Vitamin C (some studies show it reduces cold durations by about 1 day - try 2,000 mg but watch for diarrhea or stomach upset)
• Garlic - purportedly has germ-fighting characteristics, but whether it works or not to cure a cold, it's very nutritious and tastes great
• Hot herbal teas - these help keep you hydrated and breathing the steam breaks up congestion
• Hot chicken soup - this seems to help in the same way as herbal teas, but some recent studies also show that it has anti-inflammatory characteristics
• Humidifier / Steamy Shower - Steam breaks up congestion in the nasal passages

However, there is a class of cold remedies that I have found particularly effective--bring on the minerals!  There is something about certain minerals that is very disruptive to viral proliferation.  BTW, all of these remedies will be FAR more effective if you begin administering them at the FIRST-SIGN of a cold.  If you wait, even a few hours, it is much harder to fight back the rapidly multiplying viral community.  Here's the low-down of what helps and how to administer it:

• Saline solution - rinsing the nasal cavity with a saline solution has been practiced in Asia for centuries as part of yoga.  The saline flushes out mucous and pathogenic microorganisms from you nasal cavity which is the primary place they grow (the prefix "rhino" in "rhinovirus" comes from the Greek word for nose because that's where it grows).  You can buy saline solution or make it cheaply yourself using 1 cup of warm water plus a 1/4 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp baking soda.  You can administer this:

• With a bulb-syringe by plugging one nostril, tipping your head back and squirting the solution in your open nostril (it's going to feel a little scary at first but you won't drown).  The idea is to squirt it deep enough that you can feel it trickle down your throat.  Do that a couple of times and then switch to the other nostril.
• With a commercial spray can - I like these.  They're relatively inexpensive, they have a long thin spout that fits easily in your nostril, and the spray a fine mist rather and a drenching flood.
• With a "Neti Pot" (see picture above) - this has been used in India and Pakistan, as part of the yogic system of body cleansing, for centuries.  It involves using a specially designed pot (shaped a bit like Aladin's lamp) to pour water through your nostrils.  It's administered by tipping your head to one side, pouring the water through the small spout in the pot into one nostril and letting it flow out the other (again, at first this feels a little freaky but you won't drown and it's very effective)
• Gargle deeply - take a mouthful of this warm saline solution, tip your head back, and gargle as deeply down your throat as you can.
• Zinc Gluconate Glycine - there have been several studies which show that zinc gluconate glycine is effective in disrupting the interlocking mechanism of human rhinovirus, preventing it from latching on to other cells and effectively reproducing.  The downside of zinc is that it tastes so bad that some people have told me they'd rather have the cold than taste the zinc ("the cure is worse than the disease").  You can buy over-the-counter zinc lozenges that have been flavored to mitigate this horrible taste--my favorite was one made by SootHerbs with Echinacea and Vitamin C, but it has been discontinued (sometimes you can find it on eBay etc.).  The second runner-up in the palatability contest is Zicam Rapid Melts.  These can be bought at your local pharmacy or online.  They are expensive at nearly $12 per bottle, but I consider that a value because it eliminates so much misery.  Take one of these lozenges every four hours and dissolve as much of this under your tongue as you can stand.
• Silver - Now we come to a controversial, but in my experience very effective, remedy for colds. I am a huge skeptic of alternative medicine (I'm also becoming skeptical of a lot of modern western medicine given all the news about deadly medicines--I try to make healthy food and exercise my medicine).  However, I am a relentless experimenter, and so I tried some colloidal silver after hearing about it from my brother.  I have to say that I have never found anything more effective on viral infections than silver, and it doesn't even taste bad. Silver and several other metals exhibit something called the "oligodynamic effect".   The oligodynamic effect was discovered in 1893 by the Swiss Karl Wilhelm von Nägeli as a toxic effect of metal ions on algae, molds, spores, fungi, viruses, prokaryotic and eukaryotic microorganisms, even in relatively low concentrations.  This antimicrobial effect is shown by ions of mercury, silver, copper, iron, lead, zinc, bismuth, gold, aluminium, and other metals.  Silver, however, is the least toxic of any of these to humans.

The use of silver to combat viral infections - benefits, risks, and dosages:

Silver's use in human health has a long history.  Hippocrates in his writings discussed the use of silver in wound care.  At the beginning of the twentieth century surgeons routinely used silver sutures to reduce the risk of infection. In the early 20th century, physicians used silver-containing eyedrops to treat ophthalmic problems, for various infections, and sometimes internally for diseases such as tropical sprue, epilepsy, gonorrhea, and the common cold.  During World War I, soldiers used silver leaf to treat infected wounds.   After the introduction of modern antibiotics silver's use declined in western medicine, although, beginning in the 1990s it made a come-back in Alternative Medicine circles where it has been touted as a cure-all for everything from cancer to diabetes to HIV/AIDS.  This led many people to an indiscriminate use of ingested silver.

Silver, if abused (like most any other compound BTW),  can have a downside--while silver is not toxic to humans, chronic intake of silver products can result in an accumulation of silver or silver sulfide particles in the skin. These particles in the skin darken with exposure to sunlight, resulting in a blue or gray discoloration of the skin known as Argyria.  Argyria is not deadly or harmful except that the skin turns irreversibly gray/blue.  Through its “Integrated Risk Information System” (IRIS), the EPA has conducted a complete and comprehensive analysis of silver toxicity in the body. In this risk assessment document, they have referenced substantial published medical and scientific studies, and they’ve commented on the conclusions drawn from those studies, in relation to potential risks of toxicity from the ingestion of silver. This EPA document establishes the minimum amount of silver required via ingestion for a person to be placed at risk for argyria. It also gives conservative users of oral silver products a definitive answer to the question: How much can be safely consumed?  Basically, the conclusion is that the smallest amount of silver known to cause Argyria in adults, from the use of any silver compound is 900 mg of silver taken orally in one year.  According to the book, Colloidal Silver: A Literature Review: Medical Uses, Toxicology & Manufacture by John Hill, D.C., in order to reach an intake level of 900 mg. of silver over a year, an individual would have to consume a whopping three hundred and eighty 8 oz. bottles of 10 PPM colloidal silver product during the course of the year (that's over a cup per day).  Bottom line, don't abuse silver (or any other substance) for that matter!

Colloidal silver (i.e. silver ions suspended in water) at a concentration of 10 PPM is the norm for colloidal silver supplements you can buy.  The typical dose I use for a cold is 1 tablespoon every four hours until the cold is gone (usually 3-4 days).  If you only take silver when you're sick and in such small concentrations you don't come anywhere close to the level of ingestion to cause Argyria.

Back to my return from Germany in December with a budding cold.  When I got back I didn't have any zinc or colloidal silver so I began with the saline nasal irrigation.  I kept that going for 24 hours until I could make up a batch of colloidal silver (yes you can make it at home very cheaply).  Then I started on the colloidal silver at 1 tablespoon every 4 hours and by the time my wife got home two days later all the symptoms were gone.

You don't have to live with a full-blown cold.  Try out the tips above for combating the common cold.