Although the weather seems to be staying unseasonably warm in much of the country, cold season will be here before we know it. But I'm not talking about chilly temperatures and winter weather — though that will come too, eventually. I'm talking about the common cold. And you probably know that catching a cold can make you feel miserable for a week or longer. But now there's proof you can beat a cold in just a few days.
You may have heard before that zinc acetate lozenges can help you defeat the common cold, and now a study published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology has helped confirm their efficacy. For this study, the researchers wanted to see if the zinc acetate lozenges could help sufferers of the common cold even if the participants also tended to suffer from allergies.
For this study, the researchers divided the participants, most of whom were women between the ages of 20 and 50, into groups. When the participants took zinc acetate lozenges, their average cold duration dropped from an average of seven days to just over four days. These results held true regardless of whether the participants had allergies or not. It also didn't matter how old they were, what ethnicity they were, or the severity of the cold.
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This is great evidence that zinc can help shorten a cold. But did you know that zinc also can help you avoid getting a cold in the first place? Because zinc helps support your immune system, it can make sure you're fully prepared to fight off the cold germs you're likely to encounter regularly throughout the season. When you're feeling healthy, try taking one lozenge three times per week as a preventative measure. I like Advanced Zinc Lozenges, as they're one of the few zinc products on the market that is zinc acetate — the kind used in this study. Try to keep the lozenge in your mouth for 20-30 minutes, letting it dissolve slowly, rather than chewing it. This lets your body absorb the zinc most effectively.
If you do start to feel a cold coming on, you can step it up to a maximum six lozenges per day. Just make sure you don't do this for more than four days in a row. You shouldn't need to since the zinc should help you get past the cold in about four days. But if not, you don't want to overdo it.
Janet Zand
Source:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27378206.