No cure so you gotta rest. Nose is stuffed so you gotta mouth breathe. Throat is dry from mouth breathing. Dry throat makes it painful to swallow. Pain keeps you from sleeping and recovering. Lack of sleep leads to worse symptoms like piercing headaches. Need to rest to get rid of the headaches. Headache and swallowing is too painful to rest properly. Lack of rest perpetuates headaches, nose congestion, dry throat, painful swallowing.
What is this BS
Eating a toe of raw garlic is about the only real remedy. Because it’s antiviral slime covers the throat and some ingredients suport the body in defending. Lime blossom (? Lindenblüten) tea has a similiar effect but less potent and accelerates the metabolism (i.e. you get hot) instead.
I’ve heard garlic has anti bacterial properties, does this actually work? I’ll eat a whole bulb of garlic, I don’t care.
For me, it does. It’s a case of woah and then i’ve read up the why. But really chew it good (nose will instantly get free too) and bite through it.
But still, it’s only suporting; mileage may vary. And too much will get you an upset stomach.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6465033/
Found that quickly and even though it says the results may not be significant, I’m willing to eat a couple cloves of garlic with dinner. I’ll let you know how I feel tomorrow morning.
Bettee before bed, no?
Morning update: Had 1 clove with dinner. Throat was still sore when I was going to bed but much better when I woke up. Although without a control group, I don’t know how much recovery to attribute to the garlic. But I do feel better!
this sounds alot like nimbus variant, covid than a cold. i had it recently and i had the symptoms you described, the painful sore throat, swallowing, the headaches though not a s severe as yours. bronchitis as well.
a cold causes alot of sneezing, and a mild sore throat at most, plus congestion in the nasal area. it almost never causes painful sore throat, and the coughing /bronchitis usually occurs after the fever, and when the cold resolves.
with covid you coughing/bronchitis right form the start of the fever. i couldnt swallow food or water for a few days, but i was hacking/coughing thick sputum for that long.
If it makes you feel any better, your microscopic attacker is not having a very good time with your body’s response either. You’re the undefeated champion in this arena so far, keep up the winning streak.
I don’t know about who is the champion. The virus eventually fails to multiply in the host, but it meanwhile spreads to others.
How about we consider everyone a champion?
Trophies all around!
This woke-ass participation trophy shit is ruining my flu season!
Ikr I’m also suffering from this rn, but in my case throw on chills until I pop paracetamol and then I’m on a grill, bone aches like I got Raynaud’s in my legs… Yup it’s flu time!
Pump ur body with vitamins and lean protein it gives ur body all the components it needs to fight as effectively as possible. U will be on the mend in less than a day. Or maybe I’m just weird. Counter intuitively if its covid nicotine in a form that won’t irritate ur throat actually inhibits its ability to attach ur body as effectively.
I do the same. Whenever I’m ill, I eat a lot of canned fish (no cooking required, and it’s not nice cooking in a horrible headache).
I tend to get well very soon even if the illness has felt very bad. And sometimes when I don’t do the same, for whatever reason, I remain ill much longer.
Dunno why you’re getting downvoted, I’ve seen the nicotine/covid studies too. Take my upvote
It’s for the first half. There’s no objective evidence this approach works. The OP may also recover from colds quickly without the vitamin / protein intervention, may judge symptoms differently, or may not accurately track results (e.g. dismiss cases where the opposite was true).
Every study I’ve seen says that vitamins make not difference in the majority of cases. Low vitamin levels can have cold like symptoms, and in that case vitamins will fix the problem.
OP is definitely hilariously exaggerating it, but it certainly can’t hurt to make sure your body has all the nutrients it needs, and placebo shouldn’t be discounted.
In my experience and from my good but not professional knowledge, the most objectively beneficial thing is just to stay well hydrated and eat something. You need that to feel good even if you’re not sick, and when you’re fighting an infection your body is going to be diverting energy to things like fever rather than the stomach, so easy to digest is very important.
And what’s something that has lots of vitamins and minerals and easy to digest calories while also being filled with water? Fruit! (noodles are also a good option, easy to digest plus there’s broth so you get more water)
Then add on the fact that e.g. citrus just viscerally feels fresh and like it should help with illness, and you have a very convincing reason to get a bag of mandarins to snack on while you’re sick.It won’t cure a cold overnight, but it might well bring enough relief that it’s not a full week of wanting to die, and if it has absolutely no effect then oh no you ate a bunch of healthy stuff how terrible.
There is a difference between vitamins and food. Food has nutrition: not just vitamins but calories, fiber, and such. Vitamins mostly make your pee expensive as your body has to work to get rid of the excess to keep the right balance.
sometimes vitamins are needed - see your doctor for advice not internet comments. without medical advice vitamens are wasting money
you seem to be talking about supplements, not vitamins. Fruit is decidedly not expensive unless you live on the mcmurdo antarctic research station.
People talking about vitamins universially mean suppliments. Whole foods are better, but people talk about eating healty then (also meaningless but potentially better)
Piercing headaches sounds more like Covid.
Luckily part of our body is the brain and some brains are very good at finding solutions to our body’s problems. Break the cycle by getting a decongestant spray, ibuprofen and a neti pot.
It is there to give men an idea of what childbirth is like. (Tongue very much in cheek)
it’s funny because I’m AFAB but NB with a husband and I’m the one who gets the man-flu.
Dude, you are in a million years battle with other organisms trying to exploit and kill you, and you’re fucking winning. I would call that a blazing success. The other organisms are trying their literal best, their survival depends on it, and you just KEEP. ON. WINNING.
These organisms are doing their best, okay? They’re just too smol.
Some might even call this million years battle a cold war
The funny thing is, thanks to fever, this “cold war” is both literally and figuratively a hot war.
Russia and US typing in the chat…
15 proxy states typing
deep sigh
Okay, here’s your upvote. Now leave.
Actually, please don’t. It’s Lemmy and we need all the users we can get
I’m not using Lemmy. Do I have to leave?
Some of those symptoms are caused by the virus as part of its strategy for spreading. They make you likely to leak infectious fluid from your nose and mouth. Meanwhile your body has to learn how to recognize a virus that has evolved to be hard to recognize (and do that without also accidentally “recognizing” some of your own cells and killing you) and then track down every last virus. And there can be billions of viruses, many of which are hiding inside your own cells.
You’d spoil about as fast as food left out of the fridge (but due to bacteria and fungi, not viruses) if not for the constant battle your immune system fights.
The Nyquil that helps you sleep is a Godsend when I feel like this.
Your immune system and the virus are at war, the symptoms are collateral damage.
With these symptoms you can’t run, you can’t hunt, you can’t burn too many calories. Your body does everything in its power to prevent you from using resources your body needs to defeat the sickness.
That’s the reason why placebo meds work: the fact that the doctor gave you medicine means that you are really sick, and therefore you have to rest. In reality you’re behaving differently and therefore you’ll get healthy faster.
Oh: and you’re slightly dehydrated so you don’t have that much risk of infecting others.
We are tribal animals. Apes together strong. We care for the sick ones because that means they can focus on recovery.
Is that why placebos work? I could swear they had done studies that show that placebos can be as effective as medication under certain conditions, all other things being equal. Maybe not as effective as medication, but more effective than non-treatment.
Only if the medication doesn’t work. The evidence is that placebos don’t work. Mostly, the placebo effect is a statistical illusion.
It is plausible that the body will expend more energy to combat a disease if you are (sub-)consciously convinced that you are cared for and don’t need to stress. Stress hormones down-regulate the immune response. Cortisol, used for treatment of autoimmune disorders like asthma and allergies, is a stress hormone.
But a sham treatment could also have the opposite effect. If your subconscious understands that as a signal that you must get back into action, you may end up releasing stress hormones. These psychological effects are just too idiosyncratic and fickle to be used reliably.
Stuff like broken bones or cancer doesn’t respond to psychology at all. The body is already doing all it can.
I found a study some time ago about pets and placebos, where the subscription of meds for the pet resulted in different behavior by the pet owner, I couldn’t find it but here’s an article about it: https://www.veterinaryprescriber.org/free-articles/the-caregiver-placebo-effect-in-osteoarthritis-treatments
Good find. Key paragraph:
When measured objectively over the 42-day evaluation period, limb function improved in 12.1% and worsened in 8.6%, but did not change in most dogs. By contrast, caregivers (both owners and vets) reported improvements in lameness from the start, with the reported improvements increasing with time. The caregiver placebo effect appeared to be around 57% for owners and 40–45% for vets and was statistically significant at all assessment time points.
Objective measurements are one way to detect this effect. Another would be a true double-blind trial where neither owner nor vet knows which medicine was given.
You know symptoms is the tangible evidence of your body fighting the fucker? I’m no scientist but I remember hearing that apparently a raised body temp is one method of killing the cunt that’s trying to attack you.
The common cold is a family of coronaviruses, our bodies have been fighting off their mutations for millennia. An mRNA vaccines for colds, if I remember correctly, was in the works, but, well, we’ve all seen what’s happening there
Its more often rhinoviruses rather than coronaviruses or other families
I disagree, there’s no way a rhino could fit in there
Everything’s a dildo if you’re brave enough!
So does that mean a long time ago people were dying of the cold in droves?
Certainly possible, if not likely, that when these viruses first evolved to infect humans or human ancestors they caused increased mortality. Common coronaviruses and rhinoviruses still kill a lot of people, they’re often associated with pneumonia
No. But covid-19 belongs to the same group of viruses that also includes the common cold.
See the natives of America after Europeans showed up.
bad at it? you literally rest for a week then recover, as opposed to dying. your pretty fucking good at it. you just don’t know how bad it could be
Yeah I think the real thing is just not understanding how bad a cold without an immune system would be. IE only real way to put it in context is, read up on what an immune-comprimised individual goes through when they get a cold.
It’s a bit like saying
“why is my countries missile defense so crappy, whenever we’re attacked there’s chunks of metal all over the ground, so much smoke and noise it makes it hard to sleep, why are we so bad at defending from missiles”.
Look at this guy with his sick leave and ability to stay home and rest when he’s sick!
What about him?
He looks well rested.
The real question should be:
Why is our society built around disposable labor and assuming we will be at 100% functionality all the time?
It isn’t? That’s why you get paid sick leave.
That really depends on what country you live in. The US doesn’t require sick leave AFAIK and Canada only requires 5 days. So that’s like 300 days where you have to choose between getting better or paying rent. More socially progressive countries get paid sick leave, not everyone.
Trying to figure out if you are joking, or you are from a nicer country that getting paid sick leave is something everyone gets. Good chunk of the american work force, has to negotiate with their boss, go to a doctor that’s going to charge them between $50-$200 so they can tell you “yep you have a cold, here’s a note so you can prove it to your boss”, so you can give that note to your boss and not get fired for taking some UNPAID days off.
It’s the nicer country.
Lol good one.
Capitalism
