Two More Ways to Prevent Colds and Flu

Keeping hands clean and getting enough rest are very important to staying healthy through cold and flu season. Two more simple changes in lifestyle can also prevent you from getting sick nearly as often.

 

Fresh air

If you live in the United States and you have had house guests from Europe, you may have been surprised by their opening their bedroom windows even in the coldest winter weather, either just a crack or wide open, letting subzero air into your house.

While it is true that Europeans often have their winter heat provided by the city in which they live and Americans never do, opening the windows on a cold winter day is not just a lack of consideration for your heating bills. It's a traditional way of preventing colds and flu .

One of the most important things getting some fresh air can do for your winter health is to take you away from all the places where cold and flu germs hide. For that 15 minutes to an hour you are taking a brisk walk outside, you aren't inside where all the cold and flu viruses can infect you.

Letting a blast of cold air into your house can have mixed results. If you live where temperatures during cold and flu season are often just above freezing, a chilly draft can actually make you more susceptible to infection. But a blast of really cold winter air, below about 0 degrees Farhrenheit or -20 degrees Celsius, can kill the viruses that cause colds and flu.
 

Relaxation

Russian scientists have accumulated a great deal of clinical and experimental evidence about preventing winter colds and flu. After all, some areas of Siberia are ice-bound for up to eight months of the year, and colds and flu can devastate productivity in the workplace if preventive measures are not pursued early in the winter.

The advice of most Russian scientists is that reducing stress will reduce susceptibility to the symptoms of the most common wintertime upper respiratory infections . Getting enough relaxation does not keep you from coming down with a cold or flu, but it does reduce your body's production of stress hormones like cortisol. Lower concentrations of stress hormones in turn reduce the body's production of inflammatory cytokines , and there is less fever, muscle pain, and sore throat , even though the numbers of viruses in the body remain similar.

What can you do if for some reason you just can't relax? During World War II, Russian doctors recommended the use of teas and tinctures of a plant known as Eleutherococcus senticosus, or Siberian ginseng (now marketed as " eleuthero " in the USA). This herb helps the central nervous system respond to stress with just enough stress hormones, not too much, and greatly reduces the risk of colds and flu.

There is just one caveat for users of eleuthero in flu and cold prevention. If you are in the early stages of male-pattern baldness or women's hair loss caused by polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), don't use eleuthero . It contains chemicals that cause the body to conserve testosterone, sometimes accelerating male-pattern hair loss.