Keep it hot! (to fight cold and flu)

Now that swine flu's been declared a national emergency, and it's still a few weeks until it's available for everyone that wants to be vaccinated, the challenge is to stay healthy until you get the vaccination. (Although healthy habits even after vaccination help it work most effectively, so it's not the time to be cramming Doritos.)

One way to keep cold and flu at bay (or relieve symptoms if you come down with a bug) is to down hot drinks. One way I've found to keep hot drinks handy at home, at any hour, is to use an electric kettle (specifically, the ChefsChoice 677 cordless kettle pictured above). Keeping one in my bedroom (along with a teacup, saucer, and tins of tea) keeps me from having to amble up and down stairs first thing in the morning, or at night, when I want to warm up with a hot cuppa. I've had this kettle a couple of years, and couldn't be more pleased.

The kettle shuts itself off after boiling for a few minutes (with a nice, solid "click"), and has a red light on while it boils, so you know when it's on, a nice safety feature. I also like the handle's shape, and the stainless steel body keeps the water very warm for a nice long time after boiling. Ahhhhhh! That it's a nice heavy construction means that you won't easily knock it over; that the base separates from the rest of the kettle makes pouring easy.

Keeping the kettle in the bedroom also allows it to double as a humidifier, when you open the lid after the water boils and the steam fills the room. (Ahhh again!) It's also safer than a standard humidifier, as it's easy to clean and dry out (the lid opens up quite wide), making it unlikely to develop yucky mold.

Last, but certainly not least, electric kettles are considered very energy efficient, in part because they quickly warm up water.

As part of a cold-busting electric duo, consider getting the cheap luxury of a mug warmer for the office. No, it doesn't heat up your drink (that's what the kettle is for!), but keeps it from getting cold. Because you never know--you might have to leave your desk for an emergency meeting, get back half hour later, and your drink is cold. Bummer.

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While I enjoy the colder months (to a point), sometimes the cold weather gets you down, as Kool and the Gang put it aptly in the 1975 classic, Winter Sadness.

Warm days, colds stay?

Getting a bit spoiled by this recent streak of warm weather, and plan to take advantage of it again today.

Unfortunately, just because we get a few days of spring preview weather like today's...

(Flickr photo by Vicky Brock)

doesn't mean you can't fall prey to nasty microbes. Yesterday, my sinuses were plaguing me something awful--the air is still dry, so with the roller-coaster temperatures, it can be prime time for developing an upper respiratory infection. Yuck!

Thus, I was intrigued by a health feature in yesterday's New York Times, "The Claim: Never Blow Your Nose When You Have a Cold," if only because it confirmed my own experience--blowing my nose when I had a cold only made me more stuffed up and miserable! However, the "proper method" mentioned near the end of the article is odd, to blow one nostril at a time. Huh? How is that even possible? No thank you, I'd rather rely on nasal irrigation methods, which keep me uncongested, and often even ward off infections. (Using neti pots is one of several methods of nasal irrigation.)

Zzzzz fight disease?

Yuck, it's that time of year, when, even if you've gotten a flu shot, you can still come down with a cold, the most common of the upper respiratory diseases.

Of course, there are scads of folk remedies, and even prescribed medicines, such as cough medicines, often don't do much for cold symptoms. (Although a UK physician with the International Society for the Study of Cough admits that "alcohol in the form of spirits has been demonstrated to effectively suppress the cough reflex. In adult patients this can be particularly successful for nocturnal cough suppression." In this paper, he also mentions that although dextromethorphan is an effective cough suppressant, the amount used in most over-the-counter preparations is inadequate to relieve symptoms.)

However, there's been little research on the prevention front concerning this common aggravation, until recently. A study to be published in an upcoming Archives of Internal Medicine 2009; 169 (1):8, "Sleep Habits and Susceptibility to the Common Cold," in which subjects were monitored for 14 days--during which they were administered a rhinovirus (cold virus).

The results were striking--study participants who slept less than seven hours were 2.94 times more likely to develop a cold than those who had eight or more hours of sleep. Ouch! According to the study authors, "These relationships could not be explained by differences in prechallenge virus-specific antibody titers, demographics, season of the year, body mass, socioeconomic status, psychological variables, or health practices." They concluded, "Poorer sleep efficiency and shorter sleep duration in the weeks preceding exposure to a rhinovirus were associated with lower resistance to illness."

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More than neti pots...

If you think you might be coming down with a cold anyway, in addition to getting more sleep, what to do? Consider nasal irrigation--which is starting to be taken seriously as a treatment for sinonasal conditions such as rhinitis. In their medical review, "Nasal irrigations: good or bad?," researchers Christopher L. Brown and Scott M. Graham conclude, "Nasal irrigations should no longer be considered merely adjunctive measures in managing sinosal conditions. They are effective and underutilized. Some of the persisting unanswered questions will only be answered by further research."

Seconding that opinion include researchers at the University of Michigan Health System, which released a video on the benefits of nasal irrigation, mentioned as a cheap and easy way for the millions of people who suffer with spring allergies and nasal congestion to get relief for their symptoms.



(The video is called Spring Cleaning...for your nose, which may be unfortunate in that nasal irrigation may prove helpful year round.)