How to Fight a Cold with Natural Home Remedies
Having knowledge of how to fight a cold is essential for everyone as we all tend to go down with flu or catch cold at one time or another. There are several cold remedies to help you get rid of the symptoms fast.
You can fight a cold in two major ways; the first is to use preventive measures so that you don’t catch a cold. The second is to treat the already present cold with home remedies.
How to Prevent a Cold Attack
You should engage yourself in a regular exercise routine to strengthen your immune system. Exercise improves the functioning of your whole body and with your immunity higher, you will keep the cold-causing virus away.
Your immunity can also immensely benefit from having a rich social life and interacting with many people.
Enough sleep is necessary to keep your immunity at its optimum level. In addition to that, try to avoid anything that brings you stress as stress has been known to drastically affect immunity.
Fighting a Cold with Home Remedies
The most common and annoying symptom of a cold is a blocked nasal cavity. You can clear the congestion by covering your head over a bowl of hot water. Alternatively, you can take a steaming shower. Both these methods will instantly unblock your nasal passages and allow you to breathe without any problem.
Another way of easing nasal congestion is by pressing a hot pack or cold pack around your sinuses to soothe the pain. Also, to ease the pain that results from repeatedly rubbing your nose, you should apply a small amount of salve containing menthol, camphor and eucalyptus on the affected area for a cooling effect.
Taking a rest is another effective way of fighting a cold. When you fall sick with the common cold, your body will use all the energy it needs to fight the infection. That means you might not be left with enough energy to engage in other activities. It would just be good to let yourself rest for a while.
How to Fight a Cold with Foods and Health Supplements
Chicken soup is a good cold-fighting food especially if cooked with garlic. Apart from being delicious, its steam will decongest and soothe your nasal cavities. On the other hand, garlic has antiseptic properties that will clear off the cold. You can even chew the garlic cloves.
Prepare yourself a cup of sage tea by mixing one and a half cups of boiling water with half a teaspoon each of sage and thyme and a quarter teaspoon of lemon zest. Add honey and lemon juice to the mixture after fifteen minutes and drink the tea. This should bring you relief from the cold symptoms.
Use five doses of 125mg goldenseal supplement a day to kill viruses and expand your immune system. Repeat for five days. Astralagus supplement taken in doses of 250mg twice a day will also boost your immunity. Taking lozenges containing zinc after every two hours will decongest your nasal passages.
These remedies are among the best and effective ways of how to fight a cold naturally.