This morning I was listening to Morning Edition on NPR while I was driving to work, and they had a story about fighting colds and the effectiveness of various treatments. Why do some people catch everything that’s going around while others seem to avoid the colds or at least make short work of them?

Some [people] add a jolt of wheat grass or green tea to their smoothies. Others choose megadoses of vitamin C.

Many people swear by Airborne, a top-seller in drugstores that’s marketed as the “original immune-boosting tablet” and “created by a school teacher!”

According to “Dr. Ronald Turner, who leads clinical research at the University of Virginia School of Medicine,” no duplicatable studies have been done that show that Echinacea, Zinc, or even high doses of Vitamin C do anything at all for boosting the immune system. Even though Airborne sales have gone from $2 million to $100 million over the last four years, there’s no real proof that it works. They claim that people who take Airborne have cold symptoms eliminated or at least greatly reduced within 5 days, but people who have NO TREATMENT AT ALL had the same results.

So all of these supplements really have questionable results in actual testing as to whether they help prevent or reduce the effect of colds. As someone who was interviewed in the NPR story said, it may be more mental than anything; when we take some of these supplements, we feel like we’re doing something for our bodies and we get the psychosomatic effect of helping things out.

Is psychological treatment of colds worth spending so much money on them? I’d say that’s up for grabs.

I know that when *I* feel a cold coming on, I take Vitamin C more than normal and eat a lot of onion and garlic. Those are both natural antibiotics (so I’ve heard) and I’ve always had colds go away much faster when I’ve ingested high amounts of onion and garlic. Typically my first reaction is to eat a whole onion. I’ll often use a box of macaroni and cheese as the delivery mechanism for the onion since they go well together. I’ve been doing this consistently for a few years now and my instances of severe colds has gone down dramatically, even when the rest of my family has gotten them.

The NPR story did say that the one element that has consistently been shown to have an effect on colds is STRESS. People with higher amounts of stress are twice as likely to get a cold as those with less stress in their lives.

Oh, and since colds are transmitted by viruses, wearing a coat or not when you’re outside really doesn’t make too much difference. Here’s another story that NPR did about why kids hate to wear coats and whether it matters.