Let’s face it, the common cold ranks pretty high in the pantheon of annoying illnesses. It is nowhere near as aggressive or life threatening as pancreatic cancer for instance, but it creates just enough discomfort to significantly hinder your productivity and quality of life in the short term. As we probably all know from experience, constantly sneezing, getting the chills, feeling tired, and dealing with sinus pressure due to a cold or flu can make life pretty miserable for any of us. Thanks to modern science and medicine, we now have over the counter medications at our disposal to alleviate most of the uncomfortable symptoms of the common cold. There is a very important point to make here about over the counter cold/flu medications, and it goes something like this: the truth is that over the counter cold/flu medications merely alleviate the symptoms associated with the common cold and do not deal with the underlying cause. In plain english, while DayQuil or Sudafed might get you to stop sneezing and coughing all over the place for 4ish hours at a time while you fight off a cold, neither of them really do anything to correct the root cause that brought about the cold in the first place. I remember how “duped” I felt when I first learned this fact – “oh… no wonder the sinus pressure and sneezing bouts always return with a vengeance ~3.5 hours after my last dose” – I thought to myself. Regardless though, we should be thankful that we live in a time where we have remedies to quell the annoying symptoms of a cold. Can you imagine having to constantly deal with flu like symptoms all day every day for 10 straight days with no periods of relief while you try to be productive? Continue reading The nuisance also known as the common cold, and how to avoid it
