Got a Cold? Here’s Why Those Homespun Remedies Do Help

Got a cold? You’re not alone. An average healthy adult may get two to three colds a year, often starting in October. For centuries, all the way back 3,000 years to the days of Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, the autumn months have been recognized as “cold season.”

The bad news is that there is no vaccine to ward off any of the 200-plus viruses that cause a cold and no cure once one of them takes hold. The good news is that folk remedies may soothe the symptoms. Think salt, spice, and sweet. Sour too.

Take chicken soup, or simply boiled chicken. When a cold virus latches onto the membranes lining the respiratory tract, it produces mucus that blocks your nose and irritates your throat. And chicken soup, as a cold remedy, can be traced back to the 12th century, when the Jewish physician and philosopher Maimonides wrote about its medicinal properties. Today, the Mayo Clinic endorses his prescription, noting that the soup’s warm, salty fluids rinse off the irritated membranes to let them get rid of the virus themselves.

Spicy foods such as chili pepper, onions, and horseradish do the same thing but in a different way. The mustard oils in those herbs irritate the lining of the nose and throat, a phenomenon known as gustatory rhinitis. That makes them “weep” a watery fluid that makes it easier to blow your nose or cough up the mucus clogging your throat.

More good news: Sweets are also neat. All the natural sweeteners—sugar, honey, molasses—coat and soothe a sore throat. Sweet-and-sour combos like lemon drops, or tea with sugar and lemon, pack a double punch. The sugar soothes while the lemon stimulates the flow of saliva, a fluid packed with natural antibiotic substances.

Honey also has anti-inflammatory properties and may help alleviate throat pain and calm a mild cough. In 2020, a study at Germany’s University of Jena Hospital showed that honey eased throat pain after tonsillectomy, possibly lowering the need for stronger pain medication in the days following surgery. Enjoy a teaspoon of honey straight or mixed into a cup of tea.

Tea & coffee

Finally, there’s a special benefit from tea and coffee. When you have a cold, your body piles up chemicals called cytokines that transmit messages for the immune-system cells. That’s good. But a surfeit of cytokines in your brain can make you sleepy. Once in a while we all need to get up out of bed, maybe to work. That’s where tea and coffee come in. The caffeine in even a single cup of either one can increase alertness, lift your spirits, and help shrink swollen blood vessels in your nose. In addition, green tea’s natural catechin (antioxidant) compounds may help prevent and ease upper respiratory tract infections, while chamomile induces relaxation and sleep, and its antioxidants support the immune system, reducing throat irritation, congestion, and inflammation.

Ginger extracts

Thai experts discovered that the results showed both ginger extract- and loratadine-treated groups significantly decreased TNSS (total nasal symptom scores) scores, but there was no significant difference between the two groups. One word of caution for those taking an over-the-counter cold remedy containing caffeine or a decongestant. The caffeine in the coffee or tea may intensify the side effects such as jitteriness some people experience with these meds. Check the label warnings and directions on the package. Do this right and your cold will be gone in a week. Otherwise it would take seven days.