Home Remedies Have Been Helping People Fight Colds For Decades

No one enjoys catching a cold. That feeling as your nose either gets stuffed up or runny and you start sneezing or coughing is just the worst. People with the cold often feel fever or chills as well as getting a potential sore throat. Colds affect people in a different way, but everyone has dealt with a cold or two at some point in their life. 

The common cold can’t be cured. People who try are wasting their time and lying to themselves. That doesn’t mean you can’t do anything when it comes to having a cold. You can work to treat symptoms and make dealing with a cold more manageable. In some cases, letting symptoms run their course (especially a mild to moderate fever) can result in the cold moving away faster. But when it won’t, that's’ when home remedies come into play. Some simple home remedies can make most people feel a bit better so they can just manage to get through the cold and move on with their lives. This article will look at some of those home remedies that can assist a lot of people. 

1 - Get More Vitamin C

Most people feel better with some vitamin C during their cold. You can get this through supplements or get it from fresh food, especially citrus. It should be noted that vitamin C hasn’t really been proven to assist with symptom management, but has shown some benefits in simply shortening the overall length of a cold. It does this by giving the immune system a little boost. 

2 - Tea and Hot Beverages

Tea has a lot of health benefits that people don’t always realize. Tea is packed full of antioxidants, making it a natural choice. Warm tea helps to soothe the pain of a sore throat while helping to loosen the nasal passages. By adding in some honey or natural sweeteners (no refined sugar) it will make the tea even more comfortable. Herbal teas are a great choice, especially a ginger based tea. 

3 - Chicken Soup

This almost falls into the previous category, but since it’s savory and a food product, it gets its own special place as a home remedy. The power of chicken soup to fight a cold has been passed down from parent to child for hundreds of years. It’s so good because it helps in multiple ways. The chicken soup helps with some anti-inflammatory properties and helps a person to stay hydrated. It also helps with mucus buildup so your nasal passages can be a bit more clear and makes breathing easier. 

4 - Just Go to Sleep

This is the most obvious and often ignored home remedy that a person can do to help with their cold. People tend to forget just how important sleep is to allow the body to heal from a cold. While the body is sleeping, it can devote far more energy to the immune system to try and fight off the cold. This is one of the reasons why going to work is detrimental when you have a cold. That’s aside from the chance that you can spread it to other co-workers and make them sick of course. 

5 - Salt Water

This home remedy is usually specifically to help people who want to fight the sore throat aspect of their cold. You simply need to add a half teaspoon of salt to any cup of warm water. From there, you want to gargle with the salt water before you spit it out. Keeping the water warm is important as it feels better on a person’s poor throat.