Many of us have already suffered through a winter cold, or two… or three. Here are three drug-free ways you can cut down your chances of future congestion and maybe even avoid the flu, if you’ve been lucky so far.
Did you know that when it comes to treating the cold and flu, placebo effects are actually more significant than drug effects? Bruce Barrett, and M.D. and leading cold researcher at UW Madison says that the top of the line cold and flu drugs have an efficacy of only 20%. Those drugs can also come along with some scary side effects. Decongestants can be responsible for rebound congestion and cardiac arrhythmia, cough syrups can confine you to your bed, fever reducers are terrible for your liver and any/all of these can cause irritation for your gastrointestinal tract.
So instead of spending your money and possible impairing your health even further buy taking cold and flu medicine, harness the placebo effect to use if for your own good, and try out some of these drug-free solutions.
Placebo effect is believed to work in a couple of different ways. One idea is that we have unconscious learned associations when we take medicine. Taking a pill or getting a shot sends signals to our brains and bodies to self heal and creates an immune response. You can see this in action when looking at a Harvard Medical School study on placebo effect with irritable bowl syndrome. Participants in the study were split into two groups. One group knowingly took a placebo pill every day for three weeks and the other group took nothing. Even though the placebo group knew they were not receiving real medicine, the study found results as good as if they were taking the best drugs ever tested, and participants experienced double the symptom relief when compared to the group who didn’t take anything.
Your belief in the effectiveness of the medicine can also play a huge roll in the placebo effect. If you have a strong belief that a pill is going to make you better, you probably will feel better.
Here are some ways you can make the placebo effect work for you, without the sugar pills:
- Believe in your body’s ability to fight off illness. This can reduce stress and boost your mood, reducing your chance of becoming sick in the first place, and also reducing the length of an illness if you do become sick.
- Take probiotics. The gut is at the center of your immune response. A healthy gut keeps the immune system in good working order. Taking a probiotic regularly, especially during cold and flu season, and believing that it will keep you from getting ill, could definitely reduce the incidence of illness (as well as make your gut super healthy). Just make sure you do your research and buy a quality supplement. At Natural Path Health Center, we’ve done the research for you and only offer the most effective supplements.
- Meditate. A study out of UW Madison found that 8 weeks of medication training cut the number of colds among participants up to 60%! Meditation reduces stress and negative emotions. So carve out some alone time and get your “ohm” on.
- Exercise. Again, exercise reduces stress and boosts mood. If you exercise regularly, you will be healthier overall. A 2011 study found that aerobic exercise 5 or more days a week reduced number of colds by 43%.
Source: Whole Living, December 2012.
