Enough talk about global health, education reform and Carl Sagan. Here’s some actual practical advice about how to treat a cold from Science-Based Medicine (SBM).

I like SBM because–here come’s a hockey analogy–they’re the Spector’s Rumors of the health world. Specter’s Rumors, for those of you who don’t think about hockey trades 11 times a day, is a blog run by a guy who pretty much dispels every single hockey trade rumor out there, not because he’s sinister but because, honestly, most hockey trade rumors are made up. It’s refreshing because the media love running with made up trade rumors and spend most of their time analyzing trades that never happen. It’s kind of fun to speculate but I’d rather focus on what trades realistically could happen. SBM does the same thing with medicine. They do their best to pull out the real medicine from all the weird stuff out there that looks like medicine.

Anyway, onto colds. SBM’s article is really easy to read and contains a lot of useful advice and context for the discussion about cold remedies but the bottom line is that most cold treatments don’t work. The best you can do is take some anti-inflammatories, maybe a decongestant or nasal-spray and some hot liquids. Cough suppressants should be avoided because you’re stopping your body from getting rid of all that nasty mucus and phlegm. All the other remedies out there don’t work. Wait, let me rephrase that. All the other remedies out there either don’t work or don’t have a strong enough effect to make them worth their price tags.

How do we know? We test these treatments by comparing people who we gave, say, echinacea to people who think they’re taking echinacea (but are taking a placebo) and we find no difference in either the number of colds they get or how long their cold symptoms last. Some remedies might have small effects, like zinc (a review just came out saying zinc might have a small effect although it’s also more likely to make you nauseated), but, again, probably aren’t worth their price tag.

SBM also has a good explanation for why it’s easy to get tricked into thinking something works:

Most colds will get better on their own in about a week. This also creates the impression that any treatment works – no matter what you do, your symptoms are likely to improve. It is also very common to get a mild cold that lasts just a day or so. Many people my feel a cold “coming on” but then it never manifests. This is likely because there was already some partial immunity, so the infection was wiped out quickly by the immune system. But this can also create the impression that whatever treatment was taken at the onset of symptoms worked really well, and even prevented the cold altogether.

Personally, when I’m sick, I’m happy to just lay down with some ginger tea, hot soup and watch old episodes of House. Works every time.