Baltimore Health Examiner

The common cold: Sweat yourself to health

As I lay here snuffling and coughing and fighting the fuzz in my brain, it is hard to concentrate on anything but my misery.  I’m not dying.  I just have a cold.

I am a cold aficionado.  I think my husband has had 2 colds in the 14 years we’ve been married, but I can’t count high enough to figure out how many I’ve had.  The cold viruses love my upper respiratory system just as mosquitoes love other people’s legs.  I’m my own research lab.  I’ve tried just about every symptomatic medicine and remedy around, and I’d like to share my wholly unscientific results.

First, the basics.  The ‘common cold’ is caused by one of several viruses, including rhinovirus.  Antibiotics are of no use at all, so if your primary symptoms are runny nose, mild cough, sore throat and fatigue but you don’t have a fever, there is no need to run to the doctor.  While it is true that bacterial infections can occur after a cold (a sinus infection, for example), taking antibiotics during the cold phase won’t prevent that unpleasant consequence.

The best weapons are the types of treatments your grandma recommended: rest and fluids and soup.  Chicken soup has actually been found to have anti-inflammatory properties (see abstract).  Grandma, you were right.

If my husband gets even a tickle in his throat, he bundles up in sweats and a sweatshirt with a hood, puts the electric blanket on high, and sweats his way to health.  I quietly tolerated this weird behavior for years before I finally put it to the test.  It turns out, he’s not as crazy as I thought!   Since I have adopted this hooded, fuzzy socked, super heated method, my colds have drastically decreased in length.  This is, of course, a completely unscientific assessment -- but I’m convinced.  I decided to look into this phenomenon to see if there was any evidence to support the sweat-yourself-to-wellness theory.  Guess what?  There is!  Rhinoviruses, which cause many of the nasty colds that send us to our beds, replicate more slowly at higher temperatures. This means fewer ‘bugs’ for your body to fight off, and potentially a quicker recovery.  So for me that means no Tylenol, Ibuprofen or other fever reducers – I want to be as hot as possible!

When it comes to over-the-counter cold medicines, I find plain old pseudoephedrine to be the best.  A constantly runny nose is distracting, especially if you are trying to work, and pseudoephedrine does a good job of drying up the goo.  People with high blood pressure, heart trouble and some other illnesses shouldn’t take it – check with your doctor.  Also, you have to ask at the pharmacy counter for it now since it is no longer available in the ‘cold’ aisle of the drug store.  We have methamphetamine producers to thank for this small inconvenience – they were buying it in bulk in order to manufacture meth.  So if you’ve noticed that your favorite cold medicine doesn’t work as well as it used to, it may be because pseudoephedrine was replaced with another decongestant.

My hood is up.  My socks are on and my bed is heating up.  It is time to sweat myself to health.

(photo courtesy of Discovery Health)
Topics: infectious disease

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