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What are your home remedies for a cold?
Currently have a cough and a fever, and feeling pretty terrible. What are your most comforting or go-to home remedies to feel a bit not as miserable?
Currently have a cough and a fever, and feeling pretty terrible. What are your most comforting or go-to home remedies to feel a bit not as miserable?
A hot toddy is always good. Given that it's basically hot, sweet, lemon water with whiskey in it, it's good for your throat and the whiskey helps you feel less crummy about being sick.
If you're fortunate to have a good Mexican restaurant (or very kind friends/family) around, Caldo de Pollo (chicken soup with lime, cilantro, chiles, garlic, corn, and tortillas) will fix you right up. I grew up with Jewish chicken soup for colds, and it's comforting, but doesn't have anywhere near the healing power of a good Caldo.
I once got direly sick, shivering with chills and barely able to swallow, on the eve of a long-planned Mexican dinner with friends. I dragged myself out anyway, and felt the fever break while finishing a bowl of that chicken soup. It may have been placebo effect ever since, but I swear by it - there's something about that combination of ingredients which sets me right.
Similarly, a gigantic bowl of Pho (which coincidentally also usually has cilantro, garlic, chilis and lime in it... but also ginger, green onion, bean sprouts and basil!) does the trick for me whenever I have a cold. You get your hydration, sodium and easily swallowed/digested nutrients, all in one. It's perfect, plus soup soothes the soul.
Pho works too, and I love it, but mostly I've been in places where really good pho (not made from chicken bouillon powder) is harder to get or make than Caldo de Pollo.
These days, an Instant Pot lets you make the chicken broth and cooked chicken for either soup, much more easily and quickly.
Yeah, I guess I am a bit lucky that we have a massive Vietnamese community here in the Toronto area. Legit Pho restaurants are everywhere here. Although sadly I now live in the rural void to the West of Toronto/Mississauga where there are none, so I need to travel a bit to get my Pho fix these days. :(
We completed our move to the Great White North a couple of weeks ago. It's not a hotbed of places to get cinnamon basil or other fresh ingredients needed for a perfect pho.
All the Mexican cuisines, though... there's a Latino grocery with everything, including a better stock of Caribbean and Asian ingredients than I could find easily in South Florida.
Time to fire up the Instant Pot and start laying in a pile of frozen glace' de viand cubes for the inevitable winter cold and 'flu season!
LOL, it's funny how almost polar opposite our experiences are. We have very little access to authentic Latin American restaurants and grocers here in the Greater Toronto Area... pretty much everything here is Americanized Tex-Mex (e.g. Jack Astor's). Which is one of the things I miss most about living in Florida! :P
Fresh ginger tea with honey and a squeeze of lemon is my go-to.
But , i you're feeling really bold and/or don't need to go near other humans for a while, garlic tea is fairly horrible but can definitely make a sore throat feel better. Crush a couple of cloves of garlic with the side of a knife, put them in a mug and pour on hot (not boiling) water. Add some honey if you want. You probably need to. It's pretty potent.
Power through it like I'm in a montage scene in a movie. Go for a long run. Down a bunch of strong black coffee. Lift some weights. You'll feel like shit, but you'll hopefully have tricked yourself into thinking you feel like shit because you did stuff.
Hot tea, honey, Ibuprofen, Strepsils.
The same ingredients keep getting suggested in the comments here because they work, there's just lots of ways to take them. I'm not really up on the comforting bit but I usually do a lemon-ginger-honey cough syrup. Throw in some turmeric as well if you feel like it.
For a bonus, mince yourself three cloves of garlic, let it sit for a couple minutes, and then down it in a glass of water, or in some raw honey if you want to chew. That should stop just about anything short of Zika in two days tops.
Get moving. The best part of my day when I'm sick is when I ride my bike to work, and home, even if the first few pedal strokes suck. My sinuses clear for the day, I wake up a bunch, and feel better than if I had stayed home (I call out if I can't contain the goop, or I feel weak, achy or shaky). Don't do this if you have a fever, especially if it's a summer cold.
Hot toddies are nice. Brandy is pretty good (E&J, no need to get fancy), or just lots of tea (chamomile and peppermint, or mixes like Celestial Seasonings's Sleepytime or Tension Tamer) with a bunch of honey if you don't want booze. Or even add some whisky or Brandy to these.
Oxymetazoline for nasal congestion, paracetamol (tylenol) for body fever and discomfort, orphenadrine for headaches and diphenhydramine tablets if I'm coughing too much. If this combination doesn't help, it's time to see the doctor.
Edit: now that I got the meaning of "home remedy" I see that none of mine qualify. I guess I don't care/trust in the effectiveness of most home remedies.
I... don't have one. I have a perennial cold, but I just learned to live with it. I might drink some hot tea with honey if it gets really bad, but I otherwise just sneeze, cough, blow my nose, look for more tissues, get near the fire, and swear up a storm. I also give long, flat stares at the people who ask me "oh, do you have a cold?"
Fever, I nuke from orbit with paracetamol, but I don't get it often. There is some kind of really strong eucalyptus candy which I sometimes use to help with a congested nose, but most of the time I just mutter threats at my respiratory system. I discovered xylometazoline within the last year - never really used meds - but I just use it at night to get some sleep.
The "perennial cold" is usually perennial rhinitis from allergies, and there's a host of non-drowsy anti-histamines, corticosteroids, and immunomodulatory drugs to treat that. When I was traveling, I'd frequently stumble into a brand-new allergen and wake up feeling like I'd snorted QuikRete the night before. I started using generic cromolyn nasal spray before getting on the plane and that helped keep things damped down.
For perennial allergies to local sensitizers (pollens and molds), you might be better off seeing an allergist and getting desensitized if the symptoms are interfering with your life in ways that aren't easy to control, or leading to more serious persistent infections.
Also, a word of caution about the "-metazoline" and corticosteroid nasal decongestants. You can develop a dependence on these products due to rebound nasal congestion; don't use for more than a day or two. Steroids are really nasty and can predispose you to more serious bacterial/fungal infections.
I wish. I recognize rhinitis at the first sneeze, and it's mostly of a problem in the summer, but I also deal with plain old colds all the time.
I rarely take medication, what works for me is lying in bed (if possible sleeping) and taking a hot (or cold, depending on what feels better at the moment) shower the next morning, which helps getting rid of headaches. Sometimes I also use a hot-water bottle.
Don't forget to drink a lot!