I would prefer not to use OTC medications, am looking for home cures. This has been coming on for a few days, could actually be a mild flu. My symptoms include occasional cough (somewhat productive*), malaise, full head feeling, the occasional sneeze and very light sniffles.
I’d really like to truck up to OhDope this weekend, but don’t want to infect a whole bunch of other Dopers. Post your suggestions here, professional medical opinions be damned. I know that colds are caused by viruses and that these things run their course, that OTC only treat symptoms anyway, etc. But since the Medical establishment hasn’t come up with anything particularly useful, maybe some Doper’s Grandma has an amusing concotion which just might turn the trick.
Teach me your arcane methods. Please cure me!
[sub]*what a nasy little euphemism that one is[/sub]
Viruses are not curable and must be allowed to run their course. Severity of the symptoms can be made less severe with over-the counter medications such as Sudafed.
I don’t know if this one works, because I never tried it, but my former landlady Mrs. S. swears by it:
Take a large white onion and chop it up into coarse pieces. Divide the pieces in half and put them in two separate plastic baggies big enough to get your foot into (freezer bags would probably work). Put one onion bag on each bare foot, and seal around your ankle with a rubber band (or maybe tie it, just take care not to cut off your circulation).
Do this before bed. Go to sleep, and when you wake up, according to Mrs. S., the onions will be all brown/black/discolored and you should feel much better. Apparently there’s something in the onion that “draws the sickness” out of your body.
I’ve always wanted to try it, but I never have any raw onions around. If you do try it, let me know if it worked!
Elevating my body temperature works for me. If you can exercise and work up a good sweat, all the better. Otherwise, take a hot bath, have a bowl of hot soup, (chicken of course), make the drink below, and then go to bed, cover-up and stay hot.
Make a strong hot tea. Add the juice of one lemon, two table spoons of honey, and a jigger of brandy, or whiskey.
This doper’s grandma always gave her hot orange juice when she was sick.
Just put OJ in your coffee mug and heat it up for a couple of minutes in the microwave. (grandma had to do it on the stove.) Heating it up brings out the sugar and it tastes much sweeter then cold OJ. It feels oh-so-good on your throat and the heat and steam clears your sinuses a bit. It don’t know if the vitamin C helps, but it sure can’t hurt you any to get more fluids.
Wash yer hands A LOT - like every time you touch your face.
Also, you can try to sweat it out - put tiger balm on your chest/back, put on super fuzzy socks, get a heating pad and sit on it, and wrap yourself in a honkin’ comforter until you start to sweat - stay there for a while - this has actually worked for me - I can’t take over the counter medications, because I’m allergic to pseudoephedrin, so this is a nice alternative.
Are you a drinker? If so, do what I did back in my drinking days: dose up with Sudafed, ibuprofen, vitamins, cough syrup, etc., then take a day or two off work and lay in bed with a fifth of Wild Turkey and a good book. Take a couple of shots with a soda water chaser as needed. You may not get over it any faster, but it’s a lot more fun.
In a previous job I used to work very long shifts with very little rest (sometimes 36-48 hours straight through with maybe three or four stops for food).
I know fairly reliably when I’m coming down with a cold; I get odd dreams, and a feeling of ‘darkness’ before I get any physical symptoms, but when the cold starts, it’s always a rough throat for me.
Anyway, we found that none of us on the team had suffered a cold in four years or so; we would notice the symptoms starting, but would go to work for an extended period; when we returned home to sleep, we would invariably find that the symptoms had dissapeared entirely.
So now, crazy and unscientific as it may be, when I feel a cold starting, I stay up working all night and it goes away.
Two tablespoons of Dave’s Insanity Sauce in a Cup o’ Noodles killed a cold faster than anything I’ve ever witnessed. Bring a spare tongue. Better bring a spare esophagus, too.
I hate to be the bearer of doom and gloom, but if you get a headache and sore throat, you’re a gonner. The flu I had last month started out like you’re saying, and took a few days to become full strength. I lost my voice for a couple of days and coughed for almost two weeks. Herbals did nothing, and I finally shook it with Vics severe cold and cough and halls spremint drops helped me get my voice bad (less swollen throat andvocal cords, I guess) my voice started to return within hours of beginning to take the two. The only positive note is it’s only really bad for a couple of days. Get as much sleep as possible is the only non-medication that seemed to help this flu, sorry.
Hmmm, if I follow Lucifer’s advice can I say that the Devil made me do it?
I did drink a lot of brandy before bed last night and this helped me to sleep through the night. But I couldn’t locate the tea and other things to mix in with it. I will make a brief shopping run today to locate some of the items in people’s suggestions.
And Dave Stewart, in this part of Ohio we are about 800 kilometres from the nearest ocean or sea. Although getting myself down to the Gulf of Mexico (about 1300 KMs) is not such a bad idea.
Do you have a fever? If so, you may be interested in the East Indian cure described in this website.
“Damsels young, beautiful and skilled in the sport of love, with faces glowing like the full moon of autumn and darting forth beams of love from their languid blue-lotus-like eyes, with eye-brows fumigated and scented … should be asked to take the patient into a firm embrace like a forest-creeper entwining itself around a sylvan tree, and the girls should be told to keep off as soon as the patient would feel himself heated. Susruta does not advise how to treat fever in women.”
Take hydrogen peroxide. Dilute a small amount, depending on concentration of the original stuff, in water. Cut some by about half, and gargle it, do not swallow. Then dump about a capful into a full glass of water, and drink it down.
That’s my nonsense method. The plural of anecdote is hardly data, but it does seem to work.
I think they mixed up the directions, this seems as if it would make me fevered. Do you know a pharmacy where I can get this particular prescription filled?
Years ago a science geek at the University of Wisconsin shared a cure with me that he claimed was the result of actual university research.
Take a VERY hot shower, just barely below the level of scalding,i.e. as hot as you can stand. Keep your head under that stream of hot water for five minutes.
The science geek said this makes your head so hot that it is inhospitable to the virus. I have used this cure for years, and darned if it doesn’t work!
