Tips to Fight the Common Cold

When the common cold hits, it can really set you back: you miss time at work, fall behind around the house, and just feel generally lousy. It's one of those things you can't avoid, but you can learn to recover quicker.

Here's a helpful daily routine you can implement to do some damage control and hopefully recover in 2 or 3 days..

Breakfast

No matter how bad you feel, even if you feel like you can't eat a thing - you need to. Try to have either a piece of toast and some mandarin oranges or some grapefruit (any fruit will do, but these are very high in vitamin C). The toast will help settle your stomach and fill you up and the fruit will give you the vitamin C you need.

Try mixing it up by having the above breakfast one day and a bowl of chicken soup the next (that is all I ate for breakfast while I was sick and it did the trick).

Each morning with breakfast have a large glass of orange juice and a cup of mint green tea (2 teabags). Then after the meal, take one 50 mg capsule of Zinc.

Lunch

Have chicken soup and a sandwhich or one or the other. Usually when you're sick you're eating very light anyway, so this shouldn't be too rough on you.

Dinner

I had again, chicken soup and/ or a sandwhich (bread is very easy to take when you're sick). And every other day I would have a large (and I mean large) bowl of greens (turnip greens, collard greens, or mustard greens). You have to remember the vegetables when you're sick.

Then to wash it down, once again another glass of orange juice and another cup of mint green tea (2 tea bags). Tea is important because it has loads of antioxidants to help the body heal and it's soothing and warming. If you have a sore throat, definitly add some honey to your daily four cups of green tea. And after the meal, another 50 mg. Zinc capsule. ** Note: you don't want to take this much Zinc on a normal basis, only when you're sick.

Remember the Extras

1.) Drink lots of water.

2.) Dress in lots of warm layers.

3.) Keep your head covered (especially if it's raining).

4.) Don't get your feet wet.

5.) Try to avoid going in and out of drastically changing temperatures.

6.) Get your rest. I made a point to get around 10 hours sleep each night, which meant I went to bed around 7 p.m. - when your body is stressed, you have to listen to it and give it a break.

7.) Take a couple doses of Nyquil to help get your sleep.

8.) Wash your hands often - everytime you touch a dirty kleenex or your face, you risk keeping the cold around longer and spreading it to others.

9.) Don't skimp on the vitamin C. You may feel like you're going overboard, but your body gets depleted of it's supply of C when trying to fight off viruses, so keep the C coming all day long.

10.) I actually have a special soup that I eat when I'm sick, Ginger Carrot Soup to be exact, and it really does help. You can google it to find a recipe, there are tons out there. Hmm, ttheres nothing like a big heaping bowl of Ginger Carrot Soup each day to kill a cold.

11.) Another little extra tip that may seem strange to you but really does help: brush your teeth and rinse with Peroxide (it is not dangerous to do this, it is even recommended as a rinse and gargle on the front of the bottle). Peroxide actually is one of the best ways to kill halotosis, but that aside, it's an excellent disinfectant and germ killer. Rinsing and brushing with Peroxide while you're sick will keep your mouth as free of germs as it can be and you can continue using this method when you're not sick to help prevent future colds.

12.) Vicks Vapo Rub: use this every night to clear out your chest, throat and bronchial areas. This will help break up all the phlegm hanging in your body.

13.) Tiger Balm: muscles tend to get sore and tense when you're sick, rub an ample amount of Tiger balm on your neck, shoulders, and temples to relieve tension, warm the muscles and relax you for sleep or prepare you for your day. If you've never tried this stuff, you must - it's like magic in a jar. You can find it at most pharmacy stores (CVS, Rite-Aid, Duane Reade) and most health food stores.

If you do all of this consistently each day, you should recover from the common cold in 2 days or so.