Today, I had some of my usual warning signs of catching a cold: tickle in the back of my throat, sinuses swelling, etc. Usually, by this time tomorrow, I’ll probably have a full on cold. What can I do to stop it?
I already used the sinus rinse, but that didn’t help (but, it did help me to figure out that my sinuses are swollen, not blocked.) Vitamin C doesn’t help me, but I will take a multivitamin now. What else can I do?
In your shoes, I drink some Emercen-C (powdered antioxidant vitamin packet fizzy drink available at most convenience stores) and a lot of water and try to sleeeeeeeeep. I feel that tickle in my throat and my sinuses get irritable and about half the time, these three things work.
You fight off more colds/illnesses than you’re ever aware of; your iummune system is kinder to you than you probably know. Be just as kind to it and you may be surprised.
If you have to acknowledge the inevitable, my mother swears by those nose-swab Zinc cold remedies. I have yet to try one, because you have to use them within the first 24 hours, but my mom swears they cut your cold in half.
WHEN IN DOUBT, always ask a pharmacist. They are generally a lot nicer and more informative than any doctor I’ve ever dealt with. I’m not kidding. They basically know everything. Go to your local Walgreens or Wal Mart or CVS pharmacist and ask them. They have never been anything but super nice and pleasant and helpful; you don’t have to have a prescription to talk to them. Just talk to them.
3 x 1000mg doses of vitamin C per day with each meal, taken with tincture of echinacea. It certainly plays down the symptoms, and if you take it during cold season, this works well as a prophylactic.
Disclaimer: the above is my experience, and research doesn’t appear to back me up, but, whatever, I didn’t have a cold for 3 years when I did this - and the first year I stopped doing it I got a doozy.
Very finely chop a clove of garlic, and eat it on a piece of toast with honey. (It’s really not as bad as it may seem). Apparently it kills the virus in the back of your throat (or leastways must render it socially incompatible to multiply with itself. ) Cover the soles of your feet in Vick’s Vapour Rub (paying special attention to the bit where your toes join your foot) put on a pair of thick socks and go to bed. Thanks to** jjimm**, read his disclaimer, and insert “4” instead of “3.”
Hope you feel much better, Superhal.
Rub Vaseline inside the nose as far back as possible a few times a day when mixing with people who have colds and the virus cannot embed into the receptor cells.
This works better than anything else.
Neti Pot.
Garlic tablets.
Cayenne Pepper tablets.
If you are feeling particularly DirtySmellyHippy-ish, crush some garlic & ginger and make some tea with it. Drink with honey. Garlic has microbial properties (it’s a blood thinner too.) Ginger warms your body up.
A hot bath & sleep.
A note on the garlic: it must be raw, fresh, and crushed. The active ingredient isn’t actually in the clove as it sits, it’s formed when the inner core releases sulphur compounds to mingle with those in the outer ring of the clove. Crush and let it sit for 10 minutes to make the compound you want before you eat it.
If you have any of the following plants, they may help in tea form or cooked into a soup: linden flowers, echinacea root, cayenne, thyme, burdock, elderberry flower or berry, ginger, hyssop, shittake.
Sweat it out. Work out rEally hard till you’re exhausted. Works for me but some other people might just make you feel worse. So use you’re own discretion.
Bury a dead cat at a crossroads at midnight.
Zinc lozenges are worth a try. I know the research on them is inconclusive at best, but in my personal experience I think they help.
Best advice so far. Get in and take the longest, hottest shower or bath you can stand.
I personally skip vitamin C and go straight for the OJ. Water it down to somewhere between one-half and two-thirds of its normal strength and drink at least a half liter of this three times a day.
Anything that helps you sleep is a good thing. Proper rest is half the battle. I usually reach for a double shot of good bourbon just before bedtime but whatever works for you is your best bet.
As effective as any other method posted here so far.
I am not a doctor, and this works for me, I will not swear it will work for anybody else.
The instant I get the little tickle on one side of my throat, and that odd sins heaviness, I use my neti pot, followed by nasonex per instructions. I also take a dose of guaifenesen with at least 16 oz of liquid [i personally prefer ice water, YMMV]
I faithfully do the nasonex at the exact correct time, as well as the guaifenesin - if I lapse by as much as half an hour it seems that it will hit me like a ton of bricks. If I follow the dosage and timing exactly, I still have the cold, but I avoid the whole sinus crap that descends down into my chest and gently turns to pneumonia. I have determined by too many years of experience that my head colds wander down and turn into pneumonia if I am not careful, and I have more than enough lung damage already. =(
I also find that staying warm to the point of sweating helps my body burn the little buggers out. If I do end up with a slight sore throat, gingered warm lemonaid works nicely.
I used to use zinc lozenges and they worked quite well in shortening the duration and lessening the severity of a cold. But it became so that the taste associated with sickness utterly disgusted me and I could not put one more lozenge in my mouth. I switched to the nose goo, but then they discontinued that because there were complaints of people losing their sense of smell. So now I just use Afrin combined with the Neti pot, which doesn’t shorten the duration, but definitely flushes out all the mucus and makes the cold seem not as bad.
I’m going to try the Vaseline in the nose as prevention. I work with shudder preschoolers.
For hubby and I both, extra vitamin C, combined with plenty of zinc, seems to either head off a cold at the pass, or very greatly reduce it’s severity/duration.
I’m quite willing to acknowledge this may be a placebo effect. If it works, though, I don’t care.
Now on to the joke answer:
The Redneck Two-Hat Cold Cure
Hang you hat on the bedpost at the foot of your bed
Climb into bed with a bottle of Jack Daniels
Drink Jack until you see two hats on your bedpost instead of one
You are cured.
(Then, of course, we could get into hangover cures, but that’s a whole 'nother thread! 
)
I find that gargling with warm salty water when I get that back-of-the-throat tickle, several times that same day, will head off a sore throat much more often than not.
if you have a sore throat gargling then swallowing pickle vinegar is a great way to take the pain away
It’s a full on cold now, thanks though. 
The Irish cure: drink hot whiskey (with lemon, sugar, cloves and hot water). Repeat until you have no cold. Works until the next morning, when you will have both a cold and a hangover.
Wow, that’s nine times the dose when the possibility of a vitamin C overdose arises, so I hope you’re not really taking that much daily as a prophylactic.