A Bowl of Chicken Soup and a Tall Glass of O.J., Please

A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.

– Ogden Nash.

Everybody I know is suddenly sick.

It's that time of year when almost everyone I call is sick. My list from the last week goes like this: my dad, one of my sisters, my best friend from residency Rebecca, their baby, Rob (a colleague at Stansberry Research), a buddy from my Goldman days and two of his five kids... and it goes on and on. I'm probably next. I can't avoid forever, I'm sure.

The science of cold season is poorly understood. Theories range from temperature changes that release molds, spores, and latent bugs to increased travel and thus exposure to new strains to sunlight. In fact, theories cover both possible extremes – from not enough sunlight of winter to the increasing hours of exposure in the spring. The bottom line is that no one knows.

What we do know is that a few things have been tested and found to reduce symptoms and even shorten the cold's duration. The list is:

Echinacea comes from the flower heads, leaves, and roots of the so-called Purple Coneflower. Although studies are equivocal as to its benefits, the mixed results are likely do to the failure to standardize the chemicals in the treatments given. In test tubes, the chemicals increase the natural killing process of cells and regulate chemicals that recruit other immune cells. In Europe, this is a very common treatment prescribed for upper respiratory infections.

Vitamin C, aka ascorbic acid, is probably the most controversial of all the vitamins. As most everyone knows, it prevents scurvy. And for years the federal recommended daily allowance was just the amount needed in our diet to prevent scurvy.

But what you probably don't know is that 250 years ago, the British medical establishment took more than 40 years to believe it truly prevented scurvy – something that today every first-year medical student knows as the "gospel truth."

James Lind, a Scottish physician, showed in 1753 very clearly that fresh vegetables and fruits would prevent the disease, yet it took until the next century for the all-knowing medical profession to believe him. This disease killed more than a million sailors. Interestingly, Lind was probably the first to do a random clinical trial with such profound benefit to human health. He chose 12 sailors in his study and split them into pairs. He gave one group of men citrus fruits that miraculously cured them of the dreaded scurvy.

In the past 30 years, numerous studies showed that vitamin C reduced both the symptoms and the duration of colds. Amazingly, vitamin C works as well as many of the expensive commercial products, Tamiflu for example. The best part is it's much safer. Vitamin C acts as both a decongestant (dries your mucous membranes out) and as an antihistamine (dampens the sneezing and overall symptoms of a cold).

Chicken Soup is known as "Jewish Penicillin" for good reasons. Studies show that chicken soup increases the velocity of nasal secretions... thus thinning the mucous and speeding up the clearing of a stuffy head. As it turns out, chicken soup also has chemicals in it that strongly aid the action of certain white blood cells, called neutrophils. These are the main cells that attack things such as bacteria and viruses. These short-lived cells quickly chew up bacteria and using highly reactive, bleach-like chemicals kill the intruders. Amazingly, chicken soup modulates the response of these cells, reducing the amount of inflammation these cells might normally create. Thus your symptoms are reduced, but the killing continues.

Nasal saline sprays have recently been found to reduce symptoms and duration of colds in both children and adults. Admittedly not my favorite anticold trick, people in the singing business swear by this for reducing phlegm and mucous production if they have a cold. The mechanism is perhaps due to a reduction of viral load in the nasal passage by shear mechanical removal as well as osmotic killing (the cell walls break due to differences in salt concentrations between inside and outside the cells). Some people believe it is the micro amounts of salts found in seawater (and replicated in these over-the-counter products) that helps cells fight off infections – metals like zinc and selenium.

When it comes to the common cold... what do I do?

Here's to our health,

David Eifrig Jr., M.D., M.B.A.

P.S. Last week I attended a Biotechnology Conference in New York... In my next piece, I will share some thoughts on the amazing technologies coming down the pipeline.