Home Remedies for the Common Cold

My favorite home remedy for colds, coughs, fevers, and flu is A Good Healthy Distance. When people keep a good healthy distance between and among ourselves, these virus don't get far. 

That was my original answer to the Long and Short Reviews question of the week, "What is your favorite cure for the common cold?" There is no minimum word count for blog posts, and some readers like them short, but in this case I wanted to wait a day and read other people's answers. That might be considered cheating. I think it adds value for readers.

When people crowd up closer to one another than is absolutely necessary to pass things from hand to hand, yeppers, they start passing things from mouth to mouth.  One "warm'n'friendly" soul who wants to add an elbow grab to a handshake, one histrionic idjit who wants to hug friends' necks instead of shaking their hands, spreads a virus through a social group.

A good place to observe this is among Seventh-Day Adventists. "Adventists are the hand-shakingest people in the world," Booton Herndon observed. It may well be true. They organize "handshake" parties. They squeeze arms, hug necks, and generally swarm over each other. Adventist high school and college students seem to become especially gregarious, prone to perch on one another's beds, read from the same books, and try to camouflage the ravages of virus with the same makeup kits, when some of them have colds. Adventists live longer than the general population. They really do--it doesn't only seem like it. They have fewer heart attacks and lower incidences of cancer, cardiovascular disease, emphysema, and several other diseases. But they have more colds.

Some virus are hardier than others, and travel further. People who maintain a good healthy distance can still transmit coronavirus, which was Grandma's "cough," and norovirus, which was her "24-hour stomach flu." However, the rate of transmission is lower when people are further apart. Doing our socializing outdoors, on sunny days, is a good idea because virus that might be able to jump to our friends, at handshaking difference indoors, often die in the sunlight. 

Another important home remedy for these virus is maintaining a healthy immune system. If you have a healthy immune system, you probably have had coronavirus by now, but you didn't notice. The human immune system has to be functioning a bit below par in order for humans to notice coronavirus symptoms. Sometimes people with healthy immune systems notice feeling tired, sneezing once or twice, or feeling impatient as virus or bacteria start to multiply in our blood--on a Wednesday, say, after the Monday when we visited the relative who was so ill, before the Friday when the sickly friend came down with that cold that turned int pneumonia. The immune system kills most of the virus and bacteria, but somehow just a few of them seem to escape from us and go on to infect our friends. People who have healthy immune systems are known as immune carriers.   

A traditional immune system booster is the treatment known as sweating out. The virus and bacteria that make us ill will die if our body temperature changes. Our bodies run up fevers in order to burn out infectious agents. Sweating out attempts to roast out the germs without the bother of suffering from a real fever. The easiest way to sweat out a disease is to heat the bedroom, pile blankets on the bed, drink some hot tea, and go to sleep. Some cultures have developed more elaborate traditional methods, saunas, sweat lodges, etc. Sweat is a way we excrete killed (and sometimes not completely killed) disease germs. Changing the sheets, and changing or cleaning what is under the sheets, after twelve hours is common sense.

It really is possible to collect all the traditional cold "remedies" you know, set them all out on the counter when you feel a virus trying to annoy you, go to bed, and just sleep off the cold without even sweating profusely, if you have a good immune system. Michael Mock describes how this works. The trick is to express gratitude for being able to do this in a way that doesn't grind it in too hard for people who are not. He's done it, and I've done it, and it feels great to wake up cold-free, but when some people (like my younger self) do it they will wake up with a full-blown cold. Having all the "remedies" handy probably helps. It shows due respect for the weaknesses of friends, and for the infinite mutability of virus. In case you don't sleep off the virus this time, everything you need is easy to reach!

Just after the end of the Vietnam War, my father worked with a young veteran who was even bigger and stronger than he was. A cold was going around, they were warned. "I don't believe in colds! Never had one, never intend to!" the veteran boasted--he might even have suggested that the colds his family had were "all in their minds." A day or two later they talked on the phone. "I believe in colds now," the veteran wheezed. "I have got the grandfather of them all."As a little cold sufferer I don't remember that year's cold virus as especially vicious. Our immunities vary and that happened to be the year the veteran met a virus his immune system couldn't kill. His conscience might have been involved.

Maintaining a healthy immune system, keeping a healthy distance from others, and sweating out any infections we notice having picked up, allow many people to get through years without the "symptoms of a common cold" that worry other people. However, there is no cure for the common cold because the cold is the cure. Coughing and sneezing and even running a fever are ways our bodies kill and eliminate pathogens. 

Ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), zinc, and other nutrients the body uses to fight colds are available as tablets, cough lozenges, and candies. Dr. Linus Pauling publicly stated that he and his family popped a Vitamin C pill "at the first sniffle" when they'd been exposed to colds and, as a result, found themselves doing very little sniffling. That's a good, safe, cheap treatment for those who find it effective. Many people, unfortunately, don't. My mother tried the Vitamin C treatment with great hopes when I was still growing. She and I found that, as undiagnosed celiacs, we didn't get much benefit from the vitamin supplements since, like most people who have severe nutrient deficiencies today, we didn't digest the nutrient effectively. As healthy gluten-free celiacs we didn't sniffle! 

Later in the 1970s there was some discussion of whether people should be advised to take the tablets, eat whole fruits, or especially eat the white inner rinds of citrus fruit, which some cooks advise removing because they can be bitter (especially on limes). My mother got into the theory that the bioflavonoids, especially rutin, in those citrus rinds can be called "Vitamin P," because they are so beneficial. "Vitamin P" has not been added to the lists of recommended nutrients, but I learned to like citrus pith. It's not all that bitter, or hard, or tough, when the fruit is fresh. It does get a bit crusty if you use only a slice off the end of an orange or lemon and leave the rest in the fridge. So yes, I still do like to "eat my bioflavonoids," even gnawing them away from the peel when oranges have thick peels. I'm more likely to waste citrus peels. Repeated washing, with several changes of water, probably removes most pesticide sprays but I don't think it's possible to be too careful about glyphosate. 

When we get that poison banned, though, citrus peels and pith will once again be a great cold and flu remedy. Different traditions use them in different ways. George L. Thomas describes lots of folk remedies for various symptoms, including a sort of lemonade made with hot water, lemon juice, and honey. Given the levels of glyphosate in honey and citrus peels today, that could probably make a healthy person sick for a week. Before glyphosate it was a great symptom soother that even provided a long-term boost to immunity, and when we get glyphosate banned it will be one again.

Jethro Kloss recommended squeezing only the juice of a lemon into a cup of cold water, leaving the rinds in as decoration, and sipping this unsweetened lemonade before breakfast. I've tried this. It would be too sour for a child but adults can acquire a taste for that much sourness, quickly, if they feel it relieving a sore throat. 

My husband liked to simmer lemon rinds in hot water, with or without China tea, for his version of lemon tea. Great way to steam the sinuses, whether or not you've been exposed to a cold. We never had colds, but he complained of dry sinuses in winter and liked his lemon tea. 

Mother liked to boil citrus peels in at least three changes of water, then give them a final boil in honey and let them soak it up overnight. She allowed sugar in the house only on special occasions, but we lived near a beekeeper and always had more honey than anyone wanted. The local bees' "pasture" of honeysuckle, clover, and other super-sweet flowers yielded a syrup so sugar-saturated that even children didn't want very much of it. The sour and bitter elements in citrus peels did a great deal to improve the honey, in my opinion, so citrus peels were one kind of candy on which everyone agreed. You can "candy" citrus peels in sugar or the products of bees living outside the Point of Virginia, but it's not the same. 

When people do sniffle, bathing is generally agreed to help, though there are different opinions about the most effective ways to bathe to help the body wash away the virus. Salt kills many microorganisms and some healing traditions used to recommend swimming in the ocean, now no longer considered a good health practice, or rubbing the skin with salt, now considered ineffective. A more viable traditional practice, which my husband always swore by, was gargling and snorting saltwater to clean the throat and nose. Brought up to think of swimming as unhealthy, I always wonder how people can stand having chlorinated water up their noses and whether they're not concerned about salt-tolerant microorganisms in unchlorinated water, but salt does kill rhinovirus--which is why your eyes and nose flood themselves with salty liquid during an infection. Adding even more salt seems to signal the body that the job is done and bring some relief to an inflamed nose. A few years ago, warned by a relative about a rhinovirus going around, I dipped slivers of raw garlic in salt and applied them to my nose. Since the virus attacked the nostrils first, this seemed to work; the nose stopped acting like a fountain after a few more hours, and the virus seemed to subside without spreading further into the body. I expected the salt and garlic to burn the inflamed tissues on contact; in fact salt and garlic added nothing to the burn coming from the salt and acid bath that was already inflaming the tissues.

This week Lydia Schoch mentioned a saline mist treatment for the nose. From our existing medical understanding of the processes involved, I'd expect this to work like magic on rhinovirus, have no effect on flu or coronavirus, and reduce the embarrassment, if nothing else, for other virus. It might be a way to find out which virus a patient had, when different ones are circulating. 

Patrick M. Prescott describes himself as a cold sufferer who was cured by another treatment for a different condition--the Continuous Positive Airway Pressure machine doctors prescribe for some conditions like sleep apnea. Apparently it's been killing virus for him. Nice side benefit there!

I have been trained to know and use the local herbs, many of which used to be hopefully identified as cold remedies, so some people might be surprised that I don't think of them that way. Herbs fall into two categories: the pot herbs, or vegetables nature intended us to eat in moderation, and the power herbs, or medicines nature intended us to use in emergencies. 

All of the vegetables are good cold preventives, because they contain Vitamin C, fibre, water, and usually Vitamin A and other nutrients. Old herbalists used to make extravagant claims for things we eat in generous quantities, like carrots and celery, or smaller quantities, like rosemary and thyme. These herbs would cure colds, prevent bruising and bleeding, regulate digestion, build strength, stop teeth falling out, and restore sight to the blind. They will, too--if those conditions are caused by nutrient deficiencies. We don't see many advanced cases of scurvy any more but, if we did, parsley would be as powerful a cure as the Elizabethan writers said it was. Eating vegetables, wild and cultivated, will prevent or cure scurvy and build immunity to all diseases, provided that the vegetables have not been sprayed with chemicals. When glyphosate or other toxic chemicals have been applied directly to vegetables, they are likely to do more harm than good.

My favorite pot herbs are the onion family, which contain natural antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal phytochemicals and promote resistance to almost all infections. Eating a garlic clove daily boosts immunity to colds, coughs, fevers, flu, and many deadly diseases as well. Other pungent-tasting herbs like pepper and rosemary, tiny amounts of which create the special flavors of the ethnic cuisines of various tropical countries, help fight the disease germs that thrive in those countries. These herbs don't give us total immunity to every infection, but they will improve our immunity to most infections to the point where we will not need any specific treatments;

The mint family includes pot herbs, like peppermint, spearmint, ground-ivy, and basil, and power herbs, like pennyroyal, catnip, and holy basil. The most dramatic effects of plants in this group are produced by phytoestrogens. Catnip has some additional toxicity for humans; with most mints the only contraindication is high levels of phytoestrogens, especially in pennyroyal. Mints aggravate speeded-up hormone cycles and heavy bleeding caused by ovarian cysts, and may terminate difficult pregnancies. I believe my cats, who ignore catnip, have used pennyroyal to reduce the number of kittens they had. I reduced the amount of mint and some other good foods, like soy and pineapple, in my diet between ages 35 and 50, but now enjoy them again. Mint tea is not a dramatic remedy for colds--inflamed sinuses can be relieved by inhaling the steam off a cup of plain hot water--but the combination of steaming the sinuses with tea, sipping a warm liquid, and getting some vitamin supplements and extra hydration, is certainly nice for cold sufferers. For people who are not hyperestrogenemic, mint tea does a little good and no harm.

Ginger is a pot herb that can have dramatic effects on nausea. People sip the "tea" in which ginger roots have been boiled, or eat the roots by slivers, to relieve seasickness, morning sickness in pregnancy, flu-related nausea, etc., or to distract the mind and rehydrate the body after norovirus or food poisoning. Ginger is another herb that's packed with phytoestrogens. When excessive estrogen is not a concern, sipping ginger tea is not usually considered a specific remedy for a cold, but it's a pleasant sinus comfort that some people like when they have colds.

The power herbs contain phytochemicals that are used to relieve disease conditions. The benefit of eating a healthy diet, rich in vegetables, is that we don't have these conditions, or not often. I encourage some power herbs that I've not actually used in forty years and don't expect to use in another forty.

In some situations you might want to induce vomiting. The cheapest and safest way to do that is to drink a lot of extra water. The herb lobelia, a power herb that is abundant and fairly potent in my part of the world, will also promote vomiting. Using water alone will dilute the poison and the acid, and make the process of getting rid of any toxic material a person has swallowed less unpleasant. Using lobelia alone will not dilute anything, will add a slightly unpleasant flavor to the toxins and acids, and will add a little mild toxicity from the herb itself. When we need an upward purge, we usually feel nausea and need only a little encouragement to empty the stomach, so in almost any situation I'd use water. Oldtimers who were camping far from home, had limited supplies of trustworthy water, and had reasons to suspect that the nearby source of water might be the cause of the problem, used lobelia. 

A fever is part of the healing process. Sweating out infections normally eliminates the body's need to run a fever. If we still have a fever after sweating out an infection overnight, it won't be a serious concern. There are some exceptions. In my part of the world it's worth drying a few stalks of the herb called cleavers, which is covered with little hairs that cause the herb to cleave unto your legs if you brush against it. Cleavers spreads by adhering to animals' fur and people's clothes; you can feel the stiff little hairs adhering to the hairs on your skin, though the fibres aren't long or strong enough to lift the plant off the ground and spread it to new territory. Boiling dissolves the herbs and extracts phytochemicals that have diuretic, diaphoretic properties. If someone had a persistent fever that was starting to affect the nerves, causing pain, cramping, altered perceptions, etc., it would be nice to have a dried sprig of cleavers in a jar in a cupboard. You could then crumble the cleavers into a tea strainer, with or without the usual amount of China tea, mint, sage, or lemon peel, brew the tea and drink it, or give it to the sick person. After drinking cleavers tea, the feverish person will probably feel inclined to lie down. The fever will usually break in an hour or so. Additional rest and rehydration should have the patient feeling well by morning. 

In Pennsylvania, not far away, cleavers is considered a pot herb that may have some special benefits--those who eat it lose any weight from fluid retention they may have put on over the winter, and may find it easier to burn off fat too. The effects of eating a whole bowlful of cleavers, picked green and boiled until tender, are mild enough that people mindfully seek them out. Probably our cleavers would be equally safe but I personally have never wanted to try eating this herb like spinach.

Willow bark is a stronger, bitter-tasting febrifuge that may help to kill some pathogens and also tends to relieve pain. Generally safe for adults, it's not advised for children under age six. Commercial aspirin is a cheap synthetic imitation of the bitter, acidic phytochemical that gives willow its effects. I've found little use for either willow or aspirin, myself. Either is fairly safe and effective for many conditions that involve pain and inflammation. When pain is inevitable, nothing is likely to be learned from it, and the goal is to stop muscles trying to reduce pain by cramping up in ways that cause additional pain, this herb or its commercial imitation can be valuable. I survived viral arthritis using raw celery, eaten fresh out of the refrigerator, as my only treatment for pain. I don't know whether that decision had any advantages over using willow or aspirin except saving money, but it did save money. If I had an unsprayed willow tree, and knew that commercially available celery was a glyphosate sponge as it is today, I'd use willow instead of celery to cope with viral arthritis, bronchitis, pneumonia, or other possible complications from a cold.

The special herbal mixture that gives original Listerine its antiseptic power is eucalyptus, mint, willow, and thyme, preserved in slcohol. The eucalyptus, thyme, and alcohol are toxic in large amounts, so the best practice is to wash surfaces (including the mouth) with this herbal formula, but not actually drink it. Swish it around in the mouth and spit it out. Swallowing a spoonful of Listerine, like taking a prescription antibiotic drug, will kill some pathogens and have some unwanted side effects. It's worth mentioning that, for Listerine and for several less beneficial "herbal decoctions" that were sold in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, much of the effect comes from alcohol. Sober people don't become addicted to swallowing Listerine or various herb/drug "cough syrups" or similar alcohol-based mixtures, but alcoholics do. 

Common colds (which start in the nose and sinuses with a rhinovirus and/or adenovirus) and coughs, or uncommon colds (which start in the chest with a coronavirus) don't last long enough in healthy bodies for any special treatment to be necessary. When people in my neighborhood report illness, and I get that tired, lazy, grumpy, fighting-the-flu feeling, I try to eat lightly, stay further than usual from other people, avoid chill or unusual exertion, go to bed early or even take a nap if that seems indicated. I start avoiding older or noticeably immune-compromised people, and as more people are getting older I'm more likely to go into quarantine, before I have anything other people notice as symptoms. As a result my experience of a cold often doesn't include anything other people would notice as symptoms. I go home or stay home and write, do house and yard work, may spend more time outdoors doing heavier work than usual, and may or may not cough, sneeze, or run a fever. 

As a young undiagnosed celiac I really suffered from colds. As an adult I remember that experience well enough to feel virtuous about protecting others from it.