Mike Carruthers:
How many times have you heard that when you get a cold you
should take Echinacea? Well, maybe not…
Michael
Roizen:
There now are four studies on Echinacea that have found
it useless.
Dr. Michael
Roizen, author of the book, You:
The Owners Manual…
While
it used to be recommended as a way to thwart a cold and lessen
symptoms, the most recent randomized studies show that Echinacea
has no benefit in relieving symptoms or lessening the length
of the common cold.
But Dr.
Roizen says there are some things that really do work against
the common cold.
There
are four things that shorten the common cold. One is chicken
soup; we don't know why it does it. Another is high dose vitamin
C; 2000 milligrams a day for the four days immediately after
you get the first sign of the common cold. The third is zinc
lozenges 15 milligrams four times a day.
And the
fourth is a prescription drug.
And the
name is Tamiflu; the only reason that I'm telling you about
Tamiflu is not that it's better than chicken soup for the cold.
None of these are better than one another; they basically all
shorten the common cold duration and symptoms by about 40%.
But the Avian flu--you know this thing that is lethal over in
Asia and is really a bird flu-- if Avian flu gets rampant, you
want to have a course on hand 'cause it's the one anti-viral
that in fact will prevent you getting the Avian flu, as far
as we know.
At somethingyoushouldknow.net
I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.
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