To disprove the myths associated with colds and cold, you must first understand what a cold is and is not. The cold is a virus, not a bacteria. Therefore, antibiotics will not work if we want to treat a cold. There are many different viruses that can cause the common cold, but rhinoviruses, a type of cold virus, are the most common. Viruses that cause colds can be spread from infected people to others through the air or by close personal contact, such as shaking hands with someone who has a cold or touching a doorknob that has the virus on it and then touching your eyes, mouth or the nose.
The most famous myths
Going outside with wet hair does not increase the risk of constipation . Not even forgetting your jacket at home in the middle of winter makes you more vulnerable to catching a cold. To catch a cold, only one requirement must be met: exposure to the virus that causes it. And although it is worth wearing a hat on the coldest days of winter, those who claim that we lose more heat from the head than from the rest of the body areas are also wrong.
What is certain is that, once we have a cold, eating a chicken and vegetable broth is good for us , as researchers from the University of Nebraska Medical Center have verified. According to their studies, this soup reduces the inflammation behind some cold symptoms such as a stuffy nose.
Getting away from drafts does not prevent a cold. We’ve always been told: don’t sit next to a drafty window or door. You should know that cold air alone cannot cause us to catch a cold, but the body can be more susceptible to viruses in these conditions, of course.
Place an onion or garlic on the bed. It is an “ancient remedy”, which has been passed down from generation to generation. Placing an onion near the bed while we sleep or rubbing the skin with garlic as a “defense against the common cold” does not work. It will not help us protect ourselves from the cold or get better faster if we have colds. Consuming garlic, which has a key ingredient called allicin, supposedly helps block enzymes that ease colds and flu. But it is not clear if it is more beneficial to eat garlic before or during a cold.
Prevent a cold by taking zinc or vitamin C. Arguably, in this case. There are no definitive studies that conclusively prove that any of these supplements will stop a cold in its tracks. Some studies suggest that taking supplements at the beginning of a cold will shorten its duration by a day, but again, it remains nothing definite. However, unlike taking antibiotics unnecessarily, it does us no harm to try these remedies.
As for the flu, it is true that the cold makes it more contagious. Virologist Peter Palese, from the Mount Sinai University School of Medicine (New York), has found that low temperatures and low humidity make this virus stronger. Specifically, the highest rates of contagion occur at a temperature of 5ºC. And when the mercury rises above 30ºC, the transmission of the influenza virus is non-existent.
