Cold and seasonal ailments

Cold and seasonal ailments.

What is the common cold and how can we cure it? 

Very often during the change of the seasons and almost always in autumn the common cold appears and can sometimes accompany us till summer. There are those who think that a cold chill could bring a cold and those who are sure to get it when their immune system is weak. In reality however till today also science is rather perplexed on cold and despite many researches, little or nothing is known .

What or who CAUSES THE COMMON COLD

To cause the common cold are five families of viruses. The most common, responsible for 30-40 per cent of colds, are rhinoviruses, of which there are about two hundred genetically distinct varieties.

How many times do we get a cold

On average adults get between two to four colds per year, children between six and eight. Considering only the Rhinovirus, and calculating for each cold a duration of one week, are in total at least five years of mucus and sneezing in a lifetime.

It is certainly interesting to know that cold viruses only live in the nose of human beings, not in animals, apart from chimpanzees  and other primates.

Getting cold causes a cold

We always keep hearing repeating to cover ourselves, not to get cold in order to avoid any sort of ailment and in many languages the word that indicates the cold means really cold or cooling like in Spanish “resfriado” or in Italian “raffreddore”.
Till today however science has not yet found any evidence in support of this belief. On the contrary instead getting cold did not seem to increase the risk of catching it, nor even increase the severity.
In the ’50s a study on this theory was carried out, and some scientists left a group of volunteers in warmth, while the others after a bath were left, naked for an hour and a half in a corridor full of currents. Then they let them dress up, but wear damp socks for several hours (as if the previous experiment was not enough). All were given a cold virus shot and the unbelievable thing was that the percentage of those who got a cold was practically the same in both groups.

DO WE GET A COLD ONLY IN AUTUMN AND WINTER?

Cold viruses are spread everywhere but are only seasonal. The season of the cold starts in the beginning of autumn, goes on all winter up to a new peak in mid spring. In summer whether its January in Australia or July in Siberia, colds almost disappear completely.

How is it transmitted

Nowadays we know that the common cold is quite contagious probably through sneezing (which among other things has never been successfully demonstrated), handkerchiefs lying around, infected hands and other similar things, but at the time of the first world war, researchers demonstrated this thesis, stating that: if you take a concentration of nasal secretions from a person with a cold and put them into the nose or eyes of another person, even the second person gets a cold. Today we would say what a great discovery, but in reality it is less obvious than it seems and in fact today we can only imagine how contagion occurs but we do not have neither certain guidelines nor certain results, the only thing that we know is that the maximum of the contagion of a cold is in the first three days, when the concentration of the virus in the nasal secretions is the highest.

Is there a way to avoid getting a cold?

Experts all agree on a very simple advice: Wash your hands frequently and do not touch your face, nose or eyes. But we should also know that on average we take your hands to our face three times in five minutes, and in 1 hour we touch our nose 5 times, therefore washing our hands must be a very accurate and frequent moment.

IF SUFFERING FROM A COLD CAN WE STILL DO PHYSICAL ACTIVITY?

You can refer to a simple rule to decide whether to do or not physical activity: if the symptoms are from the neck up, hence blocked nose and slight sore throat, then we can practice light physical activity. If the symptoms are from the neck down, cough, muscle pain, congestion at the bronchi, than it is better to postpone.

Take a look at our tried and tested method: Anti-Diet