By Danielle Braff
It’s the time of year when you’re either worried about getting the cold and flu or you’ve got it. Despite what your mother-in-law, friends and the Internet might say, here are some facts about cold and flu causes and cures.
You’ve heard: “You’ll catch a cold if you go outside with wet hair”
Wrong. You’ll feel cold, but you won’t catch one. Colds are caused by a virus, not from the cold. Unless you catch hypothermia, which may make you susceptible to an infection, the cold won’t help you catch a cold, according to University of Utah Health Care.
You’ve heard: “Feed a cold, starve a fever”
Wrong. While you probably won’t feel like eating if you’ve got the flu and its accompanying fever, you shouldn’t actually diet during it. A study in the Journal of Nutrition found that mice who had the flu and were on a low-calorie diet took longer to recover and suffered worse effects.
You’ve heard: “Chicken soup will cure the flu/cold”
It can help. A study found that chicken soup inhibits neutrophil migration, so it has a mild anti-inflammatory effect, which will help symptoms of upper respiratory tract infections. Chicken soup can also open congested sinuses (technically all liquid broth soups will do this, as will any hot liquid). However, vegetables add to the anti-inflammatory properties in the chicken soup because they contain beta-carotene and vitamin C. However, there is no cure for the common cold, and antibiotics must be taken to kill the virus that causes the flu.
You’ve heard: “You can catch the flu from a flu shot”
Wrong. While the flu vaccine contains components of the flu virus, it doesn’t contain the complete virus, so you can’t get the flu from the shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a study where some people got a flu shot and others got a salt-water shot, the only differences in symptoms were increased soreness in the arm and redness in the injection site for the flu shot recipients.
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