It's cold and flu season...
We don't know if you noticed, but the weather has taken a turn for the baltic over the last couple of weeks and it's necessitated in us wearing our wooly hat and scarf.
It's easy to get caught out by the changeable weather and wind up with a nasty cold that haunts your life for an extended period of time.
Not only do you feel like death warmed up, but the inconvenience of trying to treat yourself through warm drinks, liberal amounts of snotty tissues and general self-pity is quite time consuming.
We like to drink infusions of hot water laced with honey and lemon and wrap ourselves in a fluffy blanket, but the fluffy blanket isn't always
or ever acceptable in the workplace.
But apparently, you can significantly shorten the length of your cold by dosing yourself with zinc.
Speaking to
Men's Health, Murray Grossan, MD, an ear, nose, and throat otolaryngologist with Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles said that zinc is proven to prevent the replication of the cold virus.
Therefore the cold virus can't survive in your body quite as long and it should result in you feeling much better far quicker.
As soon as you begin to notice cold like symptoms coming on, you should start taking zinc lozenges. Dr. Grossan said that it may also block a protein which acts as the virus' portal of entry into your body.
Take no more than 80 to 100 milligrams throughout the day and spread the dosage out. One handy trick is to leave the lozenge in your mouth as long as possible according to Dr. Grossan, it will allow the zinc ions to stay in your throat longer and have an anti-inflammatory effect.
Well do anything to get rid of those pesky colds, but have you seen the
trick for getting rid of a blocked nose?
