Common cold (flu, or sometimes mentioned as acute coryza) is not very serious illness and occurs from inflammation of the upper respiratory tract caused by virus infection. The symptoms, usually, last up to a week. However, serious cases do not show improvement even after 2-3 weeks and that’s the time to consult your doctor.
Common Cold Symptoms
- The very basic symptoms are runny nose and sneezing. Sometimes it’s accompanied by nasal congestion, fever, headache and body-ache. The fever is a result of the body’s natural process to fight the virus.
- Cough, colored phlegm or a high fever are not usual; and patient must seek doctor’s advice in such situations.
- Infants/children suffering from common cold, sometimes, develop complications like ear infections. It’s advisable to seek medical help in such conditions.
- Dehydration, reduced intake of food and fluids, decreased urination, difficulty in breathing, sleeplessness can also occur in children suffering from common cold.
Causes of Common Cold
- Virus infection: Many times it occurs from interacting with the patients.
- Change of location and climate.
- Exposure to dust
- Exposure to cold, lack of sleep, depression, fatigue can contribute to the infection as well.
Common Cold Home Remedies
As common cold or flu is not a very serious illness and can affect us very easily, it’s not advisable to take medications immediately. Instead, one can resort to following home-based remedies:
- Ginger helps a lot with cough and cold. Ginger should be boiled in water and the strained water can be taken many times a day. Ginger tea is also an effective remedy for people who usually take tea. Lemon tea or a mix of lemon-ginger tea is the right choice for fighting common cold.
- Lemon and other Citrus fruits: They increase body resistance and reduce the duration of the illness by effectively decreasing the toxicity.
- Garlic helps for minor infections and reduces the amount of mucous in the nasal cavities.
- Lady’s finger is rich in mucilage and helps reduce irritation and swelling of throat as well as persistent dry cough.
- Fresh-ground turmeric powder mixed in warm milk should be taken twice daily. This will help easy discharge from nose.
- Echinacea and Goldenseal, the natural antibiotic herbs helps boost the body’s immunity system and helps fight the viral infections.
- Bitter Gourd Roots constitute a famous folk medicine to cure a cold. 5ml paste bitter gourd root, mixed with an equal quantity of honey and same quantity of holy basil leaf juice, taken orally once a day is an effective medicine for cold.
Tips to cure/prevent common cold
Apart from the above home-based medicines, following are some easy actions that can help prevent/cure a cold.
- Take sufficient rest.
- Clean your nose often by closing one nostril and releasing breath through the other.
- Gargle warm water as many times as possible.
- Drink enough fruit juice. Avoid fish, meat and eggs.
- Intake of hot liquids, e.g. milk, tea, coffee etc.
- Take steam bath.
- Apply hot or cold packs around congested sinuses.
- When sleeping, make the pillow under your head higher.
Flying with cold or flu congestion can badly pain your eardrums due to change of pressure during takeoff and landing. Keep a decongestant and nasal spray handy. Chewing gum and frequently swallowing saliva helps prevent the risk.