Stay healthy and avoid stress. Really. There is a ton of research out
there showing that adults who keep healthy and happy have fewer colds.
Interestingly the same is not true for children. Children, the data show, are
going to get a lot of colds and all that can be done for them is to reduce the
cold's severity and duration. So don’t panic when the little tyke sneezes and
gets a fever of 102. Those symptoms are to be expected with childhood colds.
Give him plenty to drink and call the pediatrician.
Avoid antibiotics. Antibiotics kill or stop the growth of bacteria,
NOT viruses. If you take antibiotics for a cold you will not get better but you
will kill off helpful bacteria in residence, such as the vitamin-making bacteria
in your intestines. Bottom line—you will be sicker and the potential of
producing antibiotic resistant bacteria increases. There are some promising
antivirals being tested right now, but they appear to be good at shortening the
length of the cold or reducing its severity, not preventing it alltogether.
One more thing- 95% of all sore throats are caused by viruses.
Stop smoking. Yes, smokers are more prone to colds, like almost
everything else it seems, and second hand smoke increases the number of colds in
children exposed to it. I know it’s hard, where I come from tobacco is
considered a green leafy vegetable. Think of smoking plus cold as sandpaper plus
sunburn. Does that help?
What about vaccines? These too are on the horizon, the problem is
that many different types of viruses cause colds and cold viruses have many
serotypes (remember the 100+ rhinoviruses). So making a vaccine that prevents
all colds is going to be tough, and it will probably have to be a mix.
Scientists are looking for good vaccine targets from several different cold
viruses and trying to find similarities between cold viruses. That protein coat
mentioned above is showing potential.
Some debatable preventive measures. The data for the following
measures vary between studies. For example, echinacea, a herb believed to
stimulate the immune system, has been shown to prevent or treat colds
effectively in several studies, while other research has seen no effect. The
variation could be due to lack of a standard dose, a difference between
products, or the species of echinacea. Commonly used echinacea include E.
purpurea, E. pallida, and E. augustifolia and they are administered in tablets,
teas, juices, extracts and tinctures.
Other possible preventatives are vitamin C, red ginseng and nasal irrigation
(washing out the nasal passages with warm saline or using saline nasal sprays).
There are many other less reliable measures for preventing colds. A couple of
these measures are zinc and vitamin E, both of which have been shown in
countless tests to have no effect on cold prevention.