If you've got a cold coming on, take action to knock it out quickly. This will work for sore throats, coughs, etc., too. If someone close to you has an illness, this can be a great preventative.

You can follow this for about three or four days, or, as long as you like. I usually go a day or two past when all symptoms have subsided - and it is usually effective within one to two days, thus, for me its usually about four days worth.

With four small children in my home, this regimen has probably spared me from a dozen or so nasty little illnesses over the past couple of years. In fact, as I'm writing this, a nasty sore throat settled deep into my upper lungs last night, and I can already feel the symptoms easing up.

I consider this to be similar to the fire triangle - you know, three elements required to produce fire, oxygen, fuel, ignition?

The cold remedy triangle consists of nutrition, rest and psychology. Don't be put off - it's really simple, AND IT WORKS! Some cookies, vitamins and OJ and a moment or two to get yourself to a good place, and you can carry on without worrying about that cold.

NUTRITION

Keep the rest of your diet as healthy as you can. If you've been eating poorly, make an effort to improve - add some soups, chicken and vegetable, or stews, etc. Yep, its an old saw, but hydrate, hydrate, hydrate, and if you can get some good old fashoined nutrients along with that hydration, all the better.

Nutrition is the most important part and the nutrition element consists of
1) Fresh orange juice
2) Echinacea
3) Zinc
4) Vitamin C

As soon as you note the first symptoms of a budding cold, load up on echinacea, zinc and vitamin C supplements. And wash it down with fresh orange juice. I don't particularly like orange juice, but I swear this makes a difference - liquid sunshine can't hurt, anyway. Oh, and get the "squeezed from oranges" kind, because not much sunshine makes it through the dehydration/reconstitution process used to get "from concentrate" orange juice. 1/2 gallon a day is good OJ intake -take it with you to work and drink it all day long. Hydrates, adds more vitamin C, etc.

Vitamin C - I recommend 1000mg supplements morning, noon and night. Extra C is sloughed off by the body, so there's no such thing as too much (well, all things within reason.)

Echinacea, like C should be taken morning, noon and night.

Zinc can be toxic at high concentrations, so you don't want to overdo it - a 50mg dose once a

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