Best ' freshers flu' remedies

[Rascalls3]

Well my daughter started uni in September and it sounds like she is coming down with her 3rd cold/ 'flu'. She infected her flat mates with the second cold and certainly won't be popular if she starts another one! Any good remedies? She is a very healthy eater and is currently taking extra vitamin c and paracetamol.( I am fairly sure they have all just had regular colds and not flu, although you wouldn't believe the fuss the are all making!)

Sleep! Freshers just don't get enough and end up catching everything because they're so exhausted. And less kissing to spread it around.

ha I just asked my daughter as she is home for the weekend, she recommends bed, so yes I would say two paracetamol and sleep

Thanks PandaNot, yes I have recommended sleeping. She came home for the first time this week for a couple of days so has caught up a little. She hasn't been able to have the full freshers experience as she is a nursing student with plenty of early morning lectures from day1. This may have limited the kissing too!

I sympathise. My DS has come home this weekend with his second dose of freshers' flu. He'd spent the last couple of days in bed and was quite miserable. I've given him a good dinner, dosed him with paracetamol & sent him to bed. It's a bank holiday here on Monday so he gets three days to recover. He must've been feeling bad because he missed the regular Thursday student night out

It seems to be inevitable they catch bugs when they are mixing with a new crowd of people. DS eats quite well & takes vitamins, but I'm fairly certain he's partying too much & not getting enough sleep.

if she finds a cure she'll make a fortune.

no need for vitamins if they eat properly - student scurvy is apparently not unknown. They also need to stop touching each other, get a normal amount of sleep, get less pissed and wash hands regularly.

but if she's meeting lots of people and often in stuffy indoors places, it will be bug central. She'll develop immunity.

Multi vitamin and mineral supplement or at the very least extra vit C and zinc. Olive leaf extract, sambucol (elderberry extract)

Sleep and a break from the booze. Milk thistle will help with the booze a little bit.

Echinacea is great

Thank you all for your advice. I will pass it on. She isn't actually a big drinker but does get (way) too stressed and is a fairly poor sleeper. Living in halls is testing her reserves and she is just so fed up being ill all the time. I had forgotten about echinacea so will suggest she tries it together with the other recommendations.

This sounds familiar- my daughter has had it too! And sleep certainly helped- she was partying, meeting new people, starting classes, and started a part time job right away too working all weekend so no time to sleep!

Tell her to get a bag of cheap onions; every couple of days, cut a fresh onion in half and put half on her bedside table. As silly as it sounds, it absorbs all the viruses from the air and it does work. I rarely get a cold these days as I tend to keep an onion in my bedroom all the time. Get all her house mates to do the same.

Throw away after a few days and replace.

cut side uppermost. I put mine in a small cup or glass.

Melatonin will help her get to sleep and is very safe.

Also vitamin D and probiotics.

My DD is already fed up of her student halls too, even though they are very nice -loud music and parties are getting on her nerves

Thank you all again. The architect at her very nice but massively expensive Central London hall obviously didn't consider sound proofing to be necessary. Lying in her bed (in her tiny room) she can hear the neighbouring flat's conversation/partying in their kitchen amazingly clearly??