Like the Grinch that stole Christmas, a hard winter cold or bout of the flu can rob you of your holiday spirit and your stamina, to boot. Illness is of particular concern for active people because it curtails exercise routines, messes up training schedules and scuttles plans for everything from weekend ski trips to spring mountain biking excursions. Here’s what experts have to say about keeping your health from getting waylaid by the season’s most unwelcome houseguests.
Keep your hands clean. “The No. 1 way to prevent yourself from getting a cold is to wash your hands regularly,” says Dr. Michelle Barron, director of infection control at University Hospital, an arm of the CU Health Sciences Center. “Most viruses live on surfaces we touch all the time – doorknobs, handrails, telephones, faucets, ATM keypads. You can easily transmit them to yourself by touching your eyes, nose or mouth,” which is something most people do almost constantly.
To ward off the little demons, Barron routinely swabs her fingers with a squeeze of antibacterial gel from bottles she keeps at her desk, in her purse, in her car and in her home. Such hand sanitizers, which should contain at least 60 percent alcohol to work effectively, are “less expensive than a cup of coffee at Starbucks,” she notes. “I use the gel every time before I eat, after I touch a door handle and discreetly after shaking hands with an individual, because you don’t know where their hands have been.”
Barron also makes sure that when she washes her hands with soap and water, she keeps at it for at least 15 seconds – long enough, she says, to hum “Happy Birthday” or “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” “People normally wash their hands for only 3 to 5 seconds, and even in a health-care setting, I don’t think they realize how ineffective this is,” she says. “To adequately decrease the amount of bacteria and viruses on your hands, you need to wash for 15 to 30 seconds. This isn’t just what your mother told you. Research backs it up.”
Eat well. “Think color,” advises Dr. Brent Bauer, author of the “Mayo Clinic Book of Alternative Medicine,” due out in January. “Get a nice mix of oranges, reds, greens and purples. We’re shooting for people to get not just five servings, but 10 or 13 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. This does a number of things. It means you’re not eating a lot of processed foods and refined sugars. It means you’re taking in a lot of fiber. And it gives you a lot of antioxidants and other compounds that help your body combat stress.”
Drink plenty of water. Homes and workplaces tend to dry out when heating systems click on, and high altitude can further dehydrate the environment, leaving you more susceptible to nosebleeds or attacks by whatever germs are out there. “Water helps to keep your mucous membranes moist,” and thus more able to trap germs before they can spread, says Linda Schuyler, R.N., a health educator with Kaiser-Permanente in Denver. If you do catch a cold, she adds, “The better hydrated you are, the thinner your secretions are, so you don’t get as plugged up.” And by the time you feel thirsty, you’re already dehydrated.
Get enough sleep. Hectic holiday schedules, combined with pressure to meet the expectations of friends and family, can shortsheet anyone’s bedtime habits. “When you’re sleep-deprived, your body is under more stress, and this can trigger a greater susceptibility to germs,” Barron says. “A great example of this is cold sores, which are caused by a virus in your system. Normally it is kept under control by your immune system, but when your body is under stress, it causes cold sores to break out.”
Practice good etiquette. Besides covering your face when you cough or sneeze, as well as washing your hands afterward, use disposable tissues. “A handkerchief may look elegant, but when you blow your nose in it (more than once) you can just reinfect yourself,” Barron says. “With disposable tissues, you get rid of the place where viruses hang out.” And the standard, non- fancy kind work just fine. A brand touted as “antiviral,” she says, “sounds more like a marketing tool.”
Make soup. Of the three remedies most favored by conventional wisdom – vitamin C, zinc lozenges and chicken soup – the best bet if you do get a cold may be the latter. “It’s amazing,” Barron says. “The components of homemade chicken soup actually have antiviral activity. We don’t study them extensively in Western medicine, but there are probably other foods out there that we are not aware of that do the same thing.” The research on zinc is less conclusive, and the case for vitamin C – outlined in a book by the late Nobel laureate Linus Pauling a generation ago – has been repeatedly debunked by follow-up studies. Still, taking vitamin C “certainly doesn’t hurt,” Barron says. “The average recommendation is 500 milligrams a day, but you can take up to 1,500 with no known toxic effects” – in contrast to A, D and other fat-soluble vitamins, for which maximum doses are well-established.
Be skeptical of supplements. Numerous herbal concoctions are marketed as treatments for the common cold, but “the trouble is, a lot of studies (on them) go both ways, so it’s hard to get definitive answers as to their effectiveness,” says Bauer, who is medical editor of the Mayo Clinic’s “EmbodyHealth” newsletter. Moreover, he says, research can be stymied because herbal remedies with similar ingredients often come in different formulations. An “echinacea” pill, for example, may contain any of three types of the herb, which also may vary in composition depending on whether it is harvested in spring or fall.
Barron, noting that such products are not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, worries that unidentified ingredients in them may interact with other medications. As one example, she says St. John’s Wort, widely used as an antidepressant, can actually increase or decrease the level of certain drugs in the body as it metabolizes. “If you’re on prescription medicine and thinking about taking a supplement, I’d recommend that you have your doctor take a look at it first,” she says.
One encouraging note: A ginseng-based product known as COLD-fX, developed in Canada by Edmonton-based CV Technologies and being introduced to the U.S. market this month, has shown promise as an immune system booster. In clinical tests, “it helped boost the ability of white blood cells called lymphocytes to fight viral infections, so that either we don’t get sick, or if we do, it’s a milder case,” says Dr. Michael Marcus, an immunologist at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., and consultant to the firm.
Be mindful of your body. “In general, if you can stay active, it’s better,” Schuyler says. “But if you have a fever or a lot of coughing, it’s best to slack off. It’s a time when you have to listen to your body and treat it well, with rest and lots of fluids. A lot of these minor viral infections will last a couple of weeks, and the cough will last longer. When you’re really sick, stay home. You’ll get better faster and keep people around you from getting infected too.”
Get a flu shot every year. Not only do influenza viruses mutate regularly, but the illness they cause cannot be treated with antibiotics, and is much more disruptive to normal life than a common cold. “You generally can’t go to work if you have the flu,” Barron says. “You have a high fever, horrible muscle aches, and you just want to stay in bed. A cold is much less severe.” Says Schuyler: “If you get the flu, you’re down for the count. You may want to go to work, but your body is going to say ‘No.’ And it could last for two or three weeks.”
Staff writer Jack Cox can be reached at 303-954-1785 or jcox@denverpost.com.
Helpful resources
Mayo Clinic, online at mayoclinic.com
Kaiser-Permanente, at kp.org
National Institutes of Health, at medlineplus.com
Centers for Disease Control, at cdc.gov
American Academy of Family Physicians, at familydoctor.org
Roche Laboratories, at flufacts.com
