MNHQ needs your avoiding/surviving winter sniffles advice and tips.

[AbbyMumsnet]

It's that time of year when the lurgies hit with a vengeance. So, regardless of whether you've survived unscathed so far or spent New Year's Eve under the duvet, clutching a hot water bottle, we'd appreciate your advice/tips etc on how to avoid colds, sniffles et al - and how to lessen the impact if you or your family does get hit by a horrible bug. What weird concoctions do you take? Cider vinegar? Sambucol? Whiskey? Do you swear by echinacea or some other strange herb grown in a yurt? And what happens in your home if ebola, sorry, we mean man-flu, strikes your poor partner becomes ill? Do world's collide? Do let us know your thoughts.

Thanking you kindly.

Oh and stop bloody whinging. You are sick! It's very unlikely you are actually going to die so just accept the illness and it'll go a lot quicker.

Why has nobody said 'don't have children'?

oh and regular exercise! v effective in boosting immune system

Also accept that your kids, your bloke and probably the cat will also get the blinking thing, just when you are feeling better and their version will be manflu 2 - the viral revenge, whereas history will reflect yours as 'a bit of a snuffle'

Yeah Threadworm - avoiding toddlers in particular is a good one. Here you go Mumsnet 'during cold and flu season avoid licking the petri dishes that are toddlers'

Especially those ones with streaming green snot on their faces urgh.

Yes, 'don't lick toddlers' -- good one.

When I took shiny brand new DS2 to toddler group lots of little children clustered round to look. 'Oh, dear,' I said, 'Ds2 has a snotty nose.' [green trail]

'Oh, that's alright,' said little girl. 'It's not his snot, its my snot.'

I walked into nursery to pick up DD this morning and she had a receiving line of kids she was kissing goodbye too

This afternoon she said 'mummy, my throat hurts'

And of course, the main thing to remember that being cold doesn't give you a cold.

The reason why most people get colds in the winter is because they huddle together with little ventilation, so germs pass more easily.

If you went out, tit naked, in minus 20, it wouldn't give you a cold.

i think it does lower your resistance to infection actually desi

Desi, if it got you arrested and put in a holding pen a la The Shield, you could catch anything...

Starlight (a). Would rather one person off briefly than 7 people sneezing and groaning all round me because of the extra infection.

Work at home, I say!!!

bit theoretical but...

"Can a chill cause a cold?

Folklore indicates that chilling such as getting your feet wet in winter and going out with wet hair may cause a common cold but until recently there has been no scientific research to support this idea. Recent research has demonstrated that chilling may cause the onset of common cold symptoms5. A study at the Common Cold Centre in Cardiff UK in 2005 took 90 students and chilled their feet in cold water for 20 minutes and showed that the chilled group had twice as many colds over the next 5 days as a control group of 90 students whose feet were not chilled. The authors propose that when colds are circulating in the community some persons carry the virus without symptoms and that chilling the feet causes a constriction of blood vessels in the nose and this inhibits the immune response and defences in the nose and allows the virus to replicate and cause cold symptoms. The chilled person believes they have caught a cold but in fact the virus was already present in the nose but not causing symptoms.

Why more colds when its cold?

Colds and flu are definitely seasonal, with more colds in the colder weather but there is no real agreement as to why colds are seasonal. Most textbooks state that there are more colds in cold weather because we tend to crowd indoors in poorly ventilated rooms. This crowding theory has been around for over a hundred years but it does not really make sense, as our cities are just as crowded in summer as winter. A new theory that has been put forward to explain the seasonality of colds and flu, and this theory puts forward the idea that our noses are colder in winter than summer and that cooling of the nose lowers resistance to infection. If the weather is freezing outside we wrap up in winter clothes but we still leave our nose exposed to the freezing air. Every time we breathe in we cool the nasal lining and weaken our local defences against infection. If this theory is correct then covering our nose with a scarf in cold weather could help prevent colds6."

I did Starlight.

Starlight, Habbibu, you are both needy quite lovely

Manuka honey! Apparently it can even kill off MRSA. Nectar of the gods.

I'm sure I heard somewhere that sex is good for the immune system...

That was an interesting post, Franny.

Food for thought, as they say

might be good for the girls, MrsGMMH (good name btw!) but less so for the boys - they lose a fair bit of zinc with every ejaculation and zinc is necessary for healthy immune systems!

Clean your piano keyboard with methylated spirit.