Cold and Flu
Does the thought of winter fill you with dread, knowing you’ll be plagued by a succession of colds and coughs? How many of your Christmases have been ruined by a stuffy nose, hacking cough or flu like symptoms that seem to drag on and on? If this sounds familiar, then perhaps it might help you to know that good nutrition can help make the endless run of winter coughs and colds a thing of the past.
The best way to treat colds and flu symptoms is to actually prevent them by boosting your immune system and one of the best ways to do is through a healthy diet and optimum nutrition!
Having said that, the same natural treatments i.e. healthy diet and good nutrition, will also help you to fight off an infection more quickly and prevent the infections in the first place. The reason why so many of us suffer from one or either of these infections throughout the winter months is because they can be caused by any one of 200 different viruses. Once infected, the walls of the respiratory tract swell and produce excess mucus, therefore, causing typical cold symptoms of runny/stuffy nose, sore throat, cough, fever, fatigue etc.
Typical symptoms include the above and a few more:
- Sore throat
- Runny nose
- Nasal congestion
- Watery eyes
- Cough
- Headache
- Fever
- Fatigue
- Poor concentration
Colds spread from person to person and are highly contagious. Coughing, sneezing or hand to hand contact will easily pass the virus on. Plus the virus can also live for several hours on the surfaces around us. So trying to avoid infection is definitely not the best strategy!
In a healthy person a cold should run its course within 7 to 10 days, if your immune system is compromised in any way, you may feel as if one cold just runs into another. As mentioned above, the main aim is to improve the immune system, so that fewer or even no cold or flu infections occur.
How can nutrition help?
The main aim of nutrition for this type of problem is to naturally boost the immune system to help prevent future infections. This will be explained fully and is easy to put into practice with helpful suggestions, recipes and advice on making good food choices in shops and when eating out in restaurants. It’s possible that once you have optimised your nutrition and are getting a more nutrient rich diet, you could go through a whole winter season without a single cold or flu infection!*
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