A Significant Success

 
I used to believe that the window for successfully curing a cold was within 12 hours after the first symptoms occurred. I now have to revise that as a few months ago I cured a cold about 22 hours after the first symptoms occurred, although I would always recommend treating the cold as soon as possible as it is much easier.
 
The cold that I cured was one of those annoying ones that start with the slightest of symptoms, just an occasional sneeze. As I now seem to get mild hay fever in the autumn as well as the spring (maybe something to do with the acres of bracken around here or spores from fungi in the wood), it is difficult to differentiate between such a cold and hay fever. After a few sneezes I set off on a long journey, no sneezes until we got to our hotel, where I sneezed a couple more times, but it was now dinner time and I was hungry. Just a couple of sneezes before turning in for the night, but it still didn’t seem like a cold.
 
It wasn’t until after breakfast the next morning that I realised that it really was a cold. I was convinced that I would be unable to cure this one. But we were heading off to pick up our young grandchildren to come and spend a few days with us. The last thing that I wanted was to blight their stay with us by giving them a cold, so I had a go. It took about three quarters of an hour and great determination to stick at it, but at last I got rid of the cold – and it did not return!
 

An Intriguing Failure

 
A couple of months later I realised I was starting with a cold after getting back home from an evening meeting. I treated it as normal and all symptoms disappeared. The next morning I felt fine with no symptoms. However, it was the first really cold day of the winter, but as the weather was otherwise fine I decided to do some strenuous work outside. I soon realised that it was colder than I at first thought and went back to get something warmer on. I spent most of the day outside and it was cold all day. In the evening I realised I was getting the cold symptoms back and treated it again. By the middle of the next morning the symptoms were back again. Despite three further treatments I could not completely get rid of the cold and it stayed with me for a further three days.
 
This is intriguing because the only other time I failed to cure a cold was when our central heating failed, although it was the previous occasion when I didn’t try to treat the cold until about 24 hours after it started. I got up and went in the shower, which started off tepid and ended up freezing cold. I was chilled to the bone and with no central heating on I didn’t get warm until I was in the car and that had got really warm, about an hour later.
 
Two examples doesn’t constitute proof, but at the simplest level, the fact that heat kills/disables the cold virus suggests that being cold gives it more favourable conditions, so it is worth trying to stay warm for, say, 24 hours after treating a cold.
 
I have been thinking about this for a while now and speculating about the role of the immune system in the cold treatment, but more of that to follow later.

What to expect When Doing The Cold Cure

A few comments from friends and relatives have made me realise that it would be helpful to add some more about what to expect as you’re doing the cure.

 
Trying to breathe through one nostril at a time can be quite difficult. However, I find that if you clear your nose as much as possible, then with a bit of effort you can breathe even through the one that is more blocked. It’s a bit tiring and you begin to get a bit breathless, so I usually alternate at between 3 and 6 breaths for each nostril. If you really can’t breathe in through one nostril and the cold comes back you’ll find that the nostril will clear after about 2 hours or so and the other one will become blocked, so you may need to try again when that nostril is clear. I suspect that this alternate blocking is something to do with the body’s mechanism for cleaning the nasal passages. which are very sensitive and perform an important heat exchange function.
 
What usually happens when you do the cure, assuming that you have a cold with the full range of symptoms, is that first of all the nostrils are soothed and you stop sneezing. This happens very quickly. Then nothing much seems to happen for a while until you notice that the production of mucus reduces. Then, often quite suddenly, your nose becomes clear, a really wonderful feeling! Before this happens you may need to blow your nose several times, but try to do it with breaths taken in through the nose with the steam. The nose that was most blocked may still offer slightly more resistance to breathing, but this might be due to the body’s cleaning mechanism mentioned above. Also blood vessels in the nose may be dilated because of being very warm. Even though at this stage you are feeling better, you need to continue the treatment for a few minutes after the nose becomes clear, to ensure that all the viruses (or is it viri?) are killed or disabled. Obviously, it’s a bit more difficult to tell when the treatment has worked if you get one of those colds that creeps up on you with only very minor symptoms, but if the cold comes back after an hour or two just repeat the treatment and carry on a bit longer. After several successful cures you begin to realise when you’ve done enough.

Have I cured Flu (again)?

I say in the website that there is some theoretical basis for believing that the cure might work with Flu and that there is some evidence from trials that there may have been some success with Flu, but that there is too little evidence as yet to be sure that it works.

A couple of weeks ago I was feeling very ‘muzzy headed’ from around the middle of the day, not with it at all.  In the evening I felt extremely tired.  The following morning I woke up with a bit of a sniffle and sneezed a few times, so I did the cold cure.  This got rid of the cold symptoms in about 10 minutes and within a few hours I realized that I was no longer feeling ‘muzzy headed’ or tired.  Somebody that I know (definitely not sort of person you would describe as a malingerer) had been ill for a couple of weeks, including spending almost a week in bed, and she described her illness as Flu.

I compared the early symptoms and she said that they were the same.  This is a long way from being conclusive evidence, but I did feel that what I had wasn’t just an ordinary cold, so may well have been Flu.  Has anybody else had any success with Flu-like illnesses?