I have just read a fascinating article about research in to the common cold by Jennifer Ackerman, an American Science journalist in our Sydney Morning Herald. Many interesting points were made. It seems the main way we catch a cold is by touching some surface with our hands that has the cold virus on it and then touching our eyes and nose and from there it enters into our body - so the best way to avoid a cold is to keep washing our hands - its not from being kissed !

The thing that got my attention however was that even though there are over 200 different cold viruses they all produce the same symptoms because of the body's response or in some people more like reaction. Research has shown that the people who seem not to get sick  have the same number of antibodies to cold viruses in their blood as other people but their immune response was more efficient and less overblown in producing the pro inflammatory cytokines to attack the viruses, so they hardly noticed what their immune system was doing.  

The immune system seems to get on with the job without getting aggravated and attacking the body as well. I got this visual image of the channels of our immune system, the lymphatic system being congested with toxins, fats and old white cells impeding the transport of its ammunition so some explodes before it gets to where it’s needed and we suffer the collateral damage.

So, at the first sniffle start eating your greens and avoiding toxins like alcohol, sugar, cigarettes, trans fatty acids to help your immune system do its job better to fight that cold.

The other 2 interesting points were that rhino viruses prefer low humidity and people infected with rhino viruses might be less likely to catch other, more serious ones. Scientists studying the swine flu epidemic in Europe found infections were at the lowest when rhino viruses peaked. Perhaps dealing with the cold virus regularly is part of the immune system's fire drill to keep it efficient.