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Colds - Editor's Choice

| Modified on Feb 24, 2025
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Cold and Flu Home Remedies.

The common cold can have symptoms that range from "an irritating nuisance" to "a miserable inconvenience." Natural remedies for the common cold work to relieve the symptoms and kill the actual virus causing the cold. Home treatment can nip colds in the bud and the earlier the treatment begins, the faster the results are seen.

Symptoms of a common cold include stuffy and/or runny nose, headache, sore throat, cough, stuffy or painful ears, and malaise. Colds are caused by viruses. Antibiotics do not kill viruses and most over the counter remedies only treat symptoms. Simple herbs and vitamin supplements can actually kill the cold viruses and reduce the duration of the cold.

Colds Versus Allergies

Colds often start with a sore throat, headache and stuff nose. While these symptoms are common with allergies as well, colds usually start suddenly. Oftentimes with colds your symptoms begin a day or two after being around someone else who was sneezing and coughing but came to work anyway.

Colds Versus The Flu

Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between a cold and the flu. Cold symptoms are usually more mild. Usually with a cold, there is little to no fever. Bed rest is ideal but it is usually possible to push through with work or school. When you have the flu you usually have a fever and body aches as well. With the flu it is very difficult to carry on with work or school and bed rest is usually unavoidable. For remedies for the flu, see this page.

Five Quick Steps to Stop Your Cold Dead in its Tracks!

The sooner treatment begins for a cold, the better. Head for the kitchen cabinet and get some salt for a good old fashioned gargle. This will begin to kill the germs in the throat and bring pain relief. You may wonder if this penny remedy is worth the bother. But remember, salt does kill germs. Think of how salt was used to preserve foods before refrigeration. Consider the dead sea (where nothing can live) which is a salt lake. Great grandmothers recommended this for good reason!

1. Salt Water Gargle

Add 1/4 teaspoon of salt (preferable sea salt) to 1/4 cup very warm water. Gargle deeply.

For the stout-hearted -  add a pinch of cayenne pepper to the salt gargle. This will be a spicy concoction but will make it more powerful. Cayenne kills germs and relieves pain as well.

Skeptics can view this video to see the cayenne pepper gargle in action.

The next step is to kill the germs in your nose with salt.

2. Salt Water Sniffing

Add 1/4 teaspoon of salt to 1/2 cup of warm water, not quite as warm as is used to gargle with.

Pour a bit of this into the palm of  aclean hand and snort it up into the nose. Or use a straw or eye dropped to drip it into the nose. (Lie down and tilt the head back to do that.)

Have a box of tissues on hand, this will immediately begin to clean out the sinuses.

Again, if you are feeling brave, follow the treatment with a bit of cayenne pepper. Dip a q-tip into water and then into the cayenne pepper to get a bit of cayenne onto the end of the q-tip. Use the q-tip to apply the cayenne inside each nostril. (No need to go very far into the nose.) This is going to sting and cause. It will clear out the sinuses in a hurry.

3. Hot Healing Tea

Now it is time to brew a mug of healing tea, so put the kettle on.

Use regular black tea or green tea, or make apple cider vinegar tea.

Use one tea bag or 1 Tablespoon of raw apple cider vinegar per mug of tea.

Sweeten with honey, blackstrap molasses or raw sugar. Do not sweeten with artificial sweetener.

While the kettle is boiling or the tea is steeping, stop by the bathroom and get the hydrogen peroxide and grab a cotton ball.

4. Clean Out Germs in Your Ears

Pour a cap full of 3% hydrogen peroxide into each ear. This will kill germs in the ears and help to prevent an ear infection. Use the cotton ball to absorb excess hydrogen peroxide.

5. Rest!

Get back to the mug of tea. Sit down with feet up and enjoy the tea.

Tempting as it is to keep up normal routines when suffering with a cold, rest will allow the body to use its energy to fight the cold virus.

Repeat the salt water gargle, salt water sniffing, hydrogen peroxide in ears, rest and tea every few waking hours.

The above cold cure is in most homes. It is very inexpensive and carries few side effects.

At the same time, there are many more wonderful natural remedies for colds, so choose what suits!

6. Apple Cider Vinegar

Raw and organic apple cider vinegar is a quick an easy cold cure. It breaks up congestion and helps to alkalize the body. It can be added to a glass of water and taken as a tonic, or added to a mug of hot water with some honey as a tea.

7. Garlic

Raw garlic has antiviral properties and is a great quick cold cure. It can be added to soups, eggs, rice or any number of dishes. It can be spread on toast with butter or honey. Ideally, take at least a clove of garlic four times daily until your symptoms resolve.

8. Baths

Baths are a relaxing way to relieve cold symptoms. Add 1 cup of baking soda or 1 cup of hydrogen peroxide to the bath water and soak. The baking soda will help to alkalize the body. The hydrogen peroxide will help to oxygenate the body. Add 1 drop of eucalyptus essential oil to the bath water help with nasal congestion.

9. Vitamin Supplements for Colds

Vitamin C

Vitamin C can be taken several times a day when fighting a cold. In fact, the body needs more vitamin C when sick.

Zinc

Zinc is important for the immune system. Zinc supplements are usually taken once daily with a meal. Studies suggest that zinc reduces the duration and severity of cold viruses.1

Vitamin D

Often colds come along in winter months when the body has less sun exposure (and therefore fewer opportunities to make its own vitamin D.) A vitamin D supplement can help the immune system to fight a cold.

10. Diet

Eat nutritious foods to provide the body with energy and nutrients to fight the cold. Avoid sugars and processed foods. Avoid dairy as it will make congestion worse. Warm soups, broths, teas and juices are ideal.

Do you have a natural remedy for a cold? Or perhaps a home treatment that you learned from your grandmother? We would love to hear from you! Continue reading to learn the interesting natural remedies our readers have used to cure their colds fast!

Sources:

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15496046

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Additional Pages of Interest:

Colds in Children
Colds in the Elderly

The comments below reflect the personal experiences and opinions of readers and do not represent medical advice or the views of this website. The information shared has not been evaluated by the FDA and is not intended to diagnose, treat, or prevent any disease or health condition. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional for medical concerns.
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Hydrogen Peroxide

Posted by JT (USA) on 04/02/2020
 ★★★★★

Editor's Choice

Hello, My wife and I swab our ears and nostrils with 3% hydrogen peroxide any time we feel a cold coming on and she hasnt had a cold since 2014 and I havent had one since 2016 ( I felt it coming on that night and stupidly waited til the next morning to swab, LESSON LEARNED ). Now I always swab right away.

Coconut Oil

Posted by Mama To Many (Tn) on 04/19/2018
 ★★★★★

Editor's Choice

There are plenty of things I typically use for a cold, but I have finally streamlined the process for at least on of my children to simply coconut oil, since it seems to work especially well for him.

My 19 year old was starting with cold symptoms and simply doesn't have time to be sick between work and school. He is not home enough to easily dose with frequent vitamin C and vinegar tea, etc.

I just gave him 1 tablespoon of coconut oil morning and night. He readily takes it knowing how it helps him. The cold lost the wind in its sails quickly and I only dosed him for a few days.

I turned his morning dose into bulletproof mocha coffee but he took the evening dose off the spoon.

Here is how I make mocha bulletproof coffee for him:

  • 1 cup hot coffee
  • 1 Tablespoon coconut oil
  • 1 Tablespoon blackstrap molasses
  • 2 teaspoons cocoa powder

Blend in vitamix.

~Mama to Many~

Colloidal Silver

Posted by Art (California ) on 01/10/2017 2519 posts
 ★★★★★

Editor's Choice

I consider myself to be a silver nanoparticle enthusiast and I make my own so I know what I am taking, but I have never had much luck fighting a cold by taking colloidal silver orally at any dose up to a quart per day of 20 ppm colloidal silver nanoparticles, even when I took a quart per day for a month straight. In the middle to second half of that one month run, I eneded up catching a cold and it pretty much played out as colds usually do for me despite being primed with silver nanoparticles well before I caught it. The silver nanoparticles taken orally just did not do much to fight the cold that I could tell.

More recently I have switched to using an ultrasonic humidifier for short durations several times per day inhaling directly near the output port. I chose the ultrasonic humidifier because it delivers a considerable amount of silver nanoparticles directly to the areas that are most affected by a cold in an amount that is effective and probably quite a bit more so than a nebulizer can deliver in the same amount of time. This is important because of the huge surface area of the lungs which is said to be 80~100 square meters or about the size of half a tennis court. A nebulizer will take a lot longer to deliver what the humidifier can deliver in minutes and because of that huge lung surface area, that is a very important point.

https://www.reference.com/science/surface-area-human-lungs-ffc6ae1756c2f2e

If I start at the first hint of a cold, the symptoms have gone within 24 hours or less. If I am unable to start right away, the cold is usually gone in about three days or less and symptoms are greatly reduced from what I have come to expect as my norm. Normally if I don't try to stop a cold, it drags on for weeks and often times settles into my chest in which case I have gotten a cough that lasted over a year and that has happened at least 4 times that I can remember. So as far as oral silver nanoparticles for a cold......not effective for me, but delivered via an ultrasonic humidifier......A+.

I only put a small amount of 40 ppm silver nanoparticles (about 4 ounces) in the humidifier and breathe the vapor in deeply as it comes from the output port of the humidifier for about 7 minutes three times during the day for a total of about 21 minutes per day. Usually symptoms are gone the first day, but I might continue for one day after the symptoms have gone. Throw away whatever is left in the humidifier when I am done.

In any case, it is the ultasonic humidifier that makes all the difference in the world for me when using silver nanoparticles to fight a cold. Just 4 ounces compared to quarts taken orally that had little to no impact on my cold.

Art

Onion

Posted by Bjjohns (Cadillac, Michigan, Usa) on 07/14/2011
 ★★★★★

Editor's Choice

When I was growing up and I would get a bad cold, she would cut up an onion and sprinkle a generous amount of sugar over the slices. I would take a tespoon several times a day and by the next day or two my cold would be gone. To this day doctors cannot cure the common cold and this still works. Beats all the new drugs they try to put on you that harm the liver, heart, kidneys and more in my humble opinion:)


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