Which Cold Remedies Actually Work?

The average person catches two to four colds a year, which means most of us will suffer through roughly 200 colds in our lifetime.

With so many snotty struggles ahead of us each year, what remedies can we rely on to help us feel better fast? And do any of those viral cold cures we’ve seen online actually work?

That’s what we — Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson, the co-hosts of HuffPost’s “Am I Doing It Wrong?” podcast — recently asked Dr. Natasha Bhuyan, a family physician and medical director of OneMedical.

“I have patients ask me all the time about [unusual] cold cures because they want to get better fast,” Dr. Bhuyan said. “One of the things I’ve heard about recently is garlic cloves up the nose. I think it’s this idea of garlic cloves acting as a decongestant. Garlic cloves up the nose can actually be really dangerous and can really irritate your nasal passages.”

Other unorthodox remedies she’s encountered involve an unexpected article of clothing.

“The other things I’ve heard about have always been related to socks,” she revealed. “One [“remedy”] is go to bed wearing wet socks. The other is put sliced up potatoes inside your socks and go to bed. It’s this thought that it’ll pull the cold virus into your feet and out of your body.”

Despite how popular these so-called “treatments” may be, there’s no evidence that any of them work.

“Some of these ‘remedies,’ at best, you laugh at them, but at worst, they can really be dangerous for people,” Dr. Bhuyan noted.

So how can we safely find some relief if we’ve been struck down by a nasty cold?

“The studies on vitamin C are pretty mixed,” Dr. Bhuyan said. “They’ve found that if you take vitamin C regularly, you might be able to reduce the duration of a cold by half a day. Does that mean that everybody should go out and start taking a vitamin C supplement? Not exactly, because even within those studies, they found there were differences on the optimal dose. Reaching for vitamin C at the first sign of a cold likely won’t help. Taking vitamin C regularly might help shorten a cold’s duration if you get a cold, but you see that’s couched in a lot of ‘ifs,’ and it might not be worth the bang for your buck.”

“The zinc trials are not that great and the reason why is because zinc actually tastes pretty terrible,” Dr. Bhuyan said. “So, if you’re trying to do a trial and giving half the people zinc and half the people a placebo, the placebo group knows they have a placebo because we can’t make a compound that tastes as terrible as zinc.”

Zinc also comes with a lot of side effects.

“People can get nausea from taking zinc on an empty stomach. People can get upset stomachs. All of those things point to zinc coming with its own risks.”

However, it might actually help shorten a cold, even if only by a day or two.

“There are trials that show that if you take zinc at the first sign of a cough or a cold or you’re feeling a scratchy throat, [taking] 10 to 15 milligrams of zinc might reduce the duration of a cold,” Dr. Bhuyan said.

Dr. Bhuyan told us that if we want to try a particular remedy, it’s always a good idea to chat with our doctor first, and, ultimately, our best weapons to feel better when we have a cold are the simplest ones — and they’re both free.

“Water is helpful because it can help break up your mucus. Staying hydrated and giving yourself water is a good idea,” Dr. Bhuyan advised. “It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to stave off the cold or prevent the cold, but I tell people rest and fluids is really the key.”

We also chatted about what happens if we eat dairy when we have a cold, why a hot toddy might not be the best drink choice if we’re feeling under the weather, and much more.

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