The Dreaded Cold

Though I could probably think of something interesting to write about today, I think I’d prefer to just kinda ramble on about whatever comes to mind. This is, after all, more of an exercise in dedication than any actual attempt to create crap that people want to read.

As such I’m going to talk about my cold.

I don’t generally get sick. Not sure if that’s just luck, or genetics, or what. It can’t be from good, clean living, because I treat my body with the contempt generally reserved for child molesters. I mean, I eat crap, drink, smoke, pick up food off the floor – no matter which floor, I don’t exercise, I try to eat vegetables but I usually fall back on the olde stand-by of a cheese burger or a tortilla wrapped around something greasy. So it’s something of a medical mystery about why I manage to avoid most illnesses. Maybe I just come from good stock. Who knows?

However, having said all that: I’m sick.

So dealing with illness is something kinda new to me. That’s not to say that I haven’t done it before, just that I don’t have set strategy that I know works. It’s odd to deal with something where no proven methods exist. Sure, doctors and quacks alike will have all sorts of ideas for you. Starve it, feed it, drink lots of fluids, take lots of drugs. It all seems to be guess work and distractions from the real solution – let your body deal with it.

But letting your body deal with it isn’t good enough when you have nasty symptoms and have to be at work. So I figured I’d gather a bunch of theories from the internet and give a few a try.

They aren’t working.

Theory One: Starve a cold.

Apparently Mark Twain chronicled that he would fast any time he got a cold and it would resolve itself. So I considered that. It seems dumb. I mean – doesn’t your body need nourishment to enact its many processes? Don’t white blood cells get made from something? Besides, I’m fat and I want food. So Theory One is out.

Theory Two: Feed a cold.

So, if starving is dumb, maybe feeding is the alternative. This seems more palatable, though I will give this to the “starve it” theorists: digestion and food processing take resources in the body, so it would seem to make sense that gorging yourself would over-tax those processes and detract from the body’s ability to work on the cold. If all your enzymes or whatever are busy breaking down that delicious double cheeseburger, they can’t be killing the cold.

So feeding a cold seems to be a good idea, but done in moderation. And you have to eat the right things. Fluids seem to be good – soups and whatnot. Someone once told me that your first urination of the day should have color, and the rest should be as close to clear as possible. The theory is that water adds nothing to your body, but instead acts as kind of a flush – rinsing out your insides. As it passes through you it’s basically washing your pipes – taking whatever crap has been accumulated with it. So, good! Lots of brothy soups and water.

Also, everyone seems to agree that Vitamin C is good. Doctors seem to agree that it bolsters your immune system. I also read somewhere that cayenne pepper is good for the immune system, which I guess I can believe, though I have to admit that the website I found that information on was a little too vegany to be taken seriously. They recommended making lemonade from fresh squeezed lemons, water, a sprinkle of cayenne pepper, and maple syrup (don’t ask me why – maybe maple syrup isn’t as processed or filled with impurities at granulated sugar?). It’s not terrible, actually, but fresh squeezing lemons is something for weirdoes so I don’t plan on making a habit of it. I wonder if you could add cayenne to orange juice? I should try that tonight.

The end result of this theory has been good, I think (I still have doubts of the “there’s no verifiable way to prove that this crap is doing anything more than my body would have been doing on its own” variety), but this cold seems less severe for me than it has been for friends and co-workers who have been down with similar strains.

Theory Three: Take lots of drugs.

Now, in general I am against the “take lots of drugs” theory. My logic is simply that human beings managed to survive for 40,000 years or more without Sudafed, so there’s no reason why we shouldn’t continue to survive without it.

Of course, everything about that logic is stupid.

I mean, the average lifespan has almost quadrupled since our species came to be, with most of that growth (almost 50%) in the last 150 years. You have to imagine that a fair portion of that increase is due to drugs. Sure, most of it is probably diet, exercise, the fact that we’re less likely to get eaten, etc. but drugs certainly play a role. So why am I so willing to hold on to my aversion to drugs? I don’t know. A licensed psychological professional might suggest that it has something to do with my stubborn, self-reliant nature borne of my upbringing as an only child…sort of an “I aint need nobody fo nothin’” attitude (which is similarly stupid, but hey – what can you do – that’s me).

But I took the drugs anyway. Not because I think they are doing anything to cure the illness – I’m pretty sure they aren’t – but because they do seem to alleviate some of the symptoms, making it possible for me to stifle my snot and come back to work, where I’m typing this obnoxiously long blog entry about a cold.