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Does Vicks "First Defence" cold treatment work ?

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Paracetamol can be bought very cheaply - that and plenty of fluids and keeping warm are really the only treatment for cold.

 

Paracetamol, and all these other things like "Night Nurse", don`t cure the cold, they just mask the symptoms, and not that well in my experience. If you want to go swimming (or running or anything else which requires hard cardio work) you don`t want to be doing that whilst you`ve got a cold. You just don`t feel like it apart from anything, but there`s also some evidence that hard cardio work when you`ve got a cold can be bad for the heart, it can even bring on a heart attack. I remember reading an article on it about 20 years ago !

 

---------- Post added 11-01-2017 at 15:12 ----------

 

Originally Posted by Rupert_Baehr :

Most cold cures will cure a cold in 7 days.

Alternatively, you can do nothing and it will be better in a week.

Excellent information :)

 

The average cold lasts about 10 days. Normally you feel a bit under the weather for a day or two, then really quite crap for a day or two, then slowly recover for the next week or so.

I`ve always wondered why even more effort isn`t put into finding treatments for the common cold. People who say "it`s just a minor inconvenience" are talking rubbish. If you went to the doctor and he said you`d got an illness which would leave you feeling really quite bad for 6 months, and under the weather for another two years, "but don`t worry about it, it`s just a minor inconvenience", you`d feel like hitting him. Yet that is what a cold does, it`s just that it`s spread through your entire life.

In some ways the common cold is responsible for more misery than almost anything else. OK it`s not going to kill anyone, let`s get it into perspective, but in this country relatively few people get, say AIDS, yet everyone gets cold, 100 plus in the average lifetime.

Edited by Justin Smith

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When I get a cold it gradually gets worse for a few days, I feel pretty ropey for a day or two, then it slowly clears over the next 4 or 5 days.

I don`t feel like I can train (swimming) during that time, plus I feel crap.

Some people think colds are "just a minor inconvenience", in fact I read that in The Times once. I was livid. I hate getting a cold.

Let`s face it, most people get a cold or two per year for their entire life, and that`s every single person in this country.

If someone told you you`d got an illness which would make you feel crap for about 200 days (70 years at 1.5 colds a year, feeling crap for 2 days) "but don`t worry, it`s only a minor inconvenience" you`d probably feel like punching him, I know I would !

 

People with various compromised immune system conditions can get them all all the time, with varying intensity, it is a life of misery for many.

 

---------- Post added 11-01-2017 at 21:26 ----------

 

Paracetamol, and all these other things like "Night Nurse", don`t cure the cold, they just mask the symptoms, and not that well in my experience. If you want to go swimming (or running or anything else which requires hard cardio work) you don`t want to be doing that whilst you`ve got a cold. You just don`t feel like it apart from anything, but there`s also some evidence that hard cardio work when you`ve got a cold can be bad for the heart, it can even bring on a heart attack. I remember reading an article on it about 20 years ago !

 

---------- Post added 11-01-2017 at 15:12 ----------

 

 

 

That is very interesting i have quite a heavy cold, went swimming(not much exertion) this week and developed very very severe chest pains, very worrying, but would of thought exercise would have been positive, now though I wonder if they are connected, off to google.

Edited by gamezone07

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If I feel a cold coming on I start with the £1 shop "lemsip" and Benylin cough syrup. Seems to either fend it off or makes it not as bad.

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Paracetamol does not cure a cold nor does it mask the symptoms - it treats the symptoms which makes the process of having a cold easier to cope with

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A friend of mine takes echinacea.

 

""Extracts of echinacea do seem to have an effect on the immune system, your body's defense against germs. Research shows it increases the number of white blood cells, which fight infections. A review of more than a dozen studies, published in 2014, found the herbal remedy had a very slight benefit in preventing colds.""

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It's the placebo effect - if you believe it will work then it probably will.

Actually it has no effect at all but if you think it will help then good for you .

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