Well, howdy y'all.
Welcome to your mom on drugs.
The podcast where myself, Joshua Klaus and my mother, Jennifer
Seltzer, talk about drugs, probably not the ones that you
maybe want to talk about, but we're going to talk about them.
Anyway, um, on this episode, we're actually going to be discussing the
common cold, um, which is fairly common.
Um, especially this time of year, much, we're recording it, which is March in
Texas, um, and it's probably a little bit more common, you know, a couple of months
ago, um, so since everyone usually goes through this, hence the common cold,
we're just going to talk about kind of what a cold is.
So, um, mom, how would you define a cold?
Well, a cold, the common cold is actually it's a virus.
Um, and it is a virus of the upper respiratory tract.
So your nose, your throat, you know, your, um, sinus areas and stuff are the, the,
the parts that are usually most, you know, included in the
symptoms when you have a cold.
Are the sinus areas, are those the things like feeling above your eyes?
No, it's, it's the part that's kind of next to your nose and
you're kind of your cheek area.
Okay.
So just right to the right and left of my nose, I drew a line right from my
nostril, right under my eyes.
Right.
Um, uh, you may have some sinus cavities in your forehead as well, too.
I would have to double check that, but for sure the ones that I think about the most
are the ones that are kind of in your face and stuff.
So, and, um, and the, the virus that is most commonly associated with the common
cold is a rhino virus, but actually coronaviruses and adenoviruses can also
cause the common cold.
Um, they represent about 60% of all disorders that have nasal
stuffiness and discharge the common cold does.
And it's usually has a kind of a slow onset.
It can take anywhere from 12 to 36 hours for those symptoms to progress.
We all know what those, what it feels like all of a sudden you have a scratchy
throat or your nose starts being a little stuffy and it can progress.
And then usually the symptoms can last up to nine to 10 days,
usually when you have a cold.
Nine to 10 days.
Okay.
Yes.
And you said that most of the viruses that cause the common cold
are called rhinovirus.
Rhinovirus.
And I guess, correct me if I'm wrong, but rhino is, it's the, the prefix of
that means nose.
Yes, correct.
Yeah, that is correct.
Yes.
Um, interestingly, just a few little fun facts about the common cold.
There are 1 billion cases that occur in the United States annually, every year.
A billion cases.
It is one of the top five illnesses in the United States and adults typically
will have two to three colds a year, but kiddos will have maybe six or so per year.
That makes sense because there's about 330 to 350 million people in the States.
So if you're getting three times a year, that's roughly a billion.
Right.
And so they can, like you, like you mentioned earlier, colds can
happen at any time of the year.
They are a little bit more common in the winter months.
Um, and they are, they, they can cause, they could be the leading cause of
absences from both work and school.
Um, because you don't, you know, you just don't feel all that great.
They're usually self-limiting.
Um, and they, like I said, they can, they, they can last up to 10 days in adults.
Some kiddos that can last up to three weeks.
So just the leftover symptoms and stuff.
Um, and most of the, the drugs that are used to treat the common cold
are over the counter medications.
And we can spend up to $8 billion on those medications annually to take
care of the symptoms associated with the common cold.
Wow.
Yeah.
Well, let's, uh, let's talk about those treatments in just a second.
I kind of want to go back to, so one of the things you mentioned is that they
can be transmitted more in the winter.
Like, is there a reason for that?
Like why they would spread more in the winter than in the summer?
I would say a couple of those reasons are that when, when we're in the winter
months, we are more confined into the same space.
And again, remember that the common cold is transmitted either directly through
touch or the secretions that you excrete, like sneezing or coughing or even talking.
So if you're in more confined spaces because it's colder and you can't go
outside and run and play, then that's going to be one of the reasons why the,
that's going to be one of the reasons why colds might happen more
frequently in the winter time.
Okay.
So is, uh, this, this is a dumb question, but is the reason why it's called the
common cold is because it's common when it's cold.
I don't know exactly.
Um, I, that it could be, it could be somebody looked that up and send us a
tweet or whatever, a message that would be really nice to know.
Um, another thing that, um, you said that 60% of all colds are caused by rhinoviruses.
Are there other types of viruses that cause the common cold as well?
Um, yes, the Corona virus, as well as the adenovirus, the cold, the
adenovirus or the, or other common or other viruses that can cause the common cold.
But Corona virus, not like something like, like not, not the COVID virus, but it
is in that same grouping of viruses and stuff.
So, okay.
So you have like, oh, so Corona virus is like a, it's like a family of viruses
and you get in, get infected by one of the members of that family.
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah.
So there's a certain Corona virus that will cause something like COVID, which
is like SARS, SARS-CoV-2.
Right.
And then you have, speaking of colds.
Yes.
And, uh, my, unfortunately my mom has a cold.
Well, she's on the tail end of a cold right now.
This is perfect timing.
That is the cough is the last thing to go.
So, yes.
And, um, and then you, so then you have something like maybe another type of
Corona virus that will cause cold like symptoms, but it could be a lot of, a lot
of different types of Corona viruses, just because viruses evolve and replicates.
Right.
Okay.
Right.
Okay.
So, okay.
So let's, um, let's say that I have, I imagine they're spread by droplets
since they're respiratory viruses.
That is correct.
Okay.
Like either, either from sneezing or, or your saliva from talking and coughing.
So, yes.
And then, and then if you touch the surface that that stuff has lasted, landed
on, then you could get it from that way as well to doorknob, you know, that kind
of thing.
Okay.
And is there a certain amount of time?
Like, for example, is one of the reasons why it's prevalent in the winter is
because in the summer, it's a little bit warm and it'll evaporate those drops
quicker, like, so will that basically the moisture be evaporated?
So there's no droplet for that thing to travel.
I did not see anything in the literature that I read about that.
That's something I definitely could try to check into and see if we can
find the answer to that.
Yeah.
So anybody wants to look up the answer to that, um, feel free.
I'm using the techniques that we have here of looking up things in the
literature.
Um, but, you know, this is all we do.
We just ask questions and hopefully we have the answers to them, but sometimes
we don't, and hopefully somebody's asked that question.
Okay.
So let's move to probably where people really care about, which is they have a
cold and they're feeling lousy, um, like yourself and you're on the tail end of
feeling lousy and someone wants to get relief from the cold because, you know,
in, in the stages of disease, there's prevention, which is doing things like
washing your hands, staying away from people who are sick, et cetera.
Um, but then there's also things like when you actually get the disease, then
you have to treat that disease.
So I think a lot of people who are listening to this might want to know how
to treat their loved ones, especially if, you know, kids are getting it and they're
getting it three times a year or six times a year, if you're a kid.
So what can people do when they've gotten the symptoms to help give them some
relief or even short, if there's a possibility of shortening the
duration of the disease.
Yes.
Um, so let's, let's just really review really quickly the symptoms that are
usually associated with the common cold.
Usually you can have a scratchy throat, sore throat, you know, you're going to
have, um, a, um, you know, runny nose.
Um, you'll have nasal congestion.
You can have sneezing, you can have, you know, discharge from your nose.
It usually can be clear.
It can turn color a little bit.
It doesn't necessarily mean that you have an infection if it does.
And then, um, a cough, you kiddos can have a low grade fever.
You have a low grade fever associated with it, but that's not really that common.
And then you just kind of feel, you know, kind of malaise, just kind of,
kind of lethargic, kind of like, you just don't feel like doing much and stuff.
So the cough happens in about 30% of people.
Um, and it's the thing that usually is the later symptom in a cold.
And it can last up to about three weeks.
That was great timing.
Wasn't that perfect?
So, um, and so, uh, uh, things to do, like you've, you've mentioned as far as things
to do, as far as treating it, first of all, let me, let me emphasize this.
I can't emphasize this enough.
The common cold is caused by a virus, a virus.
So you can't treat a common cold with an antibiotic.
Antibiotics are not going to work for the common cold.
Now, if you end up with a secondary infection, you know, due to the common cold,
like you have an otitis media and ear infection, and it happens to be bacterial, or you end
up with a sinus infection and it happens to be bacterial, then that would be the time
for antibiotics, but otherwise, getting antibiotics prescribed for the common cold is
really not a good idea because any time that you take antibiotics and you don't need them,
then you increase the chance of those organisms becoming resistant to that antibiotic.
And then when you actually do need the antibiotic, it may not work as well.
So we've got to be just discreet as to when we use the antibiotics.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, it's, it's so easy for, uh, medical professionals just to provide someone
a Z pack, which is essentially the standard course for antibiotics, um, when they don't
have a proper diagnosis, like, well, it could be bacterial here, take a Z pack, but it could
actually cause more harm than good later down the road.
Like mom said, um, also you have a gut bacteria that help out in myriad ways.
I ha I highly recommend checking out, um, Dr.
Huberman podcast.
Um, they talk a lot about some great science stuff and he does an episode on gut microbes,
uh, that we'll link in, in this episode.
Um, but that you also essentially run the risk of killing a lot of those, which can
cause some downstream effects as well.
Um, yeah, so be careful when taking things that you don't necessarily need, like mom
said.
Right.
And Josh, and Josh talked about the fact that, you know, you want to use as far as
preventive measures for a cold or concern, hand washing, hand sanitizer, avoiding, um,
uh, people who are sick, cleaning areas that may have been contaminated.
Certainly those are things that you can do to help prevent the, the common cold.
Um, things that have shown little or no effects in treating the common cold are
ginseng, echinacea, vitamin C and water gargles.
So, I mean, Linus Pauling came up with vitamin C years ago, as far as something to
be used to treat the common cold.
And it doesn't, there hasn't really been evidence that really support its use.
Yeah.
I think there's a lot of people who want to, maybe we should, we should, we should
talk about why that mechanism, I think there's a lot of people who think that
vitamin C really does play a role, um, in, in treating things like the common cold.
And I don't really know what the mechanism that people suggest of why it should work.
Um, because vitamin C, I think everyone out here knows that you should get your
vitamin C. Um, the classic case study is one of the reasons people found it to be
important is that when sailors were out at sea, um, they would develop this disease
called scurvy and scurvy is this nasty disease where essentially your skin almost
starts kind of coming apart in various ways because vitamin C actually plays a role.
I believe in collagen formation.
And, um, collagen is an important protein, um, in keeping your skin nice and tight and
actually maintaining its shape. It's why there's a lot of collagen treatments for
like beauty products and things like that. Um, and when sailors were given fruits or
when they went to ports that had fruits and they were able to take those on board to eat
them, because when you're a sailor and you're out at sea, you're going to kind of eat anything,
uh, because it's, you're going to, you're on a journey for months on end.
They found that those individuals didn't have scurvy and they said they thought
there must've been something in the fruit. And they found that that thing happened to be
vitamin C. So vitamin C also has other uses. It's also an antioxidant, um, which, you know,
antioxidants have various uses too, that have kind of been debunked as well. Like they thought that
there was some roles in anti-aging with antioxidants that haven't really panned out as well in the
literature and in evidence. Um, long story short, vitamin C as well, you can only take so much of
it in a day. Um, vitamin C is something called water soluble. Um, if you've ever mixed cocoa powder
or Kool-Aid inside of water, and you notice that the powder disappears and it mixes with the water
really well, that means that something soluble, meaning that it sticks really well with water,
as opposed to something like oil or butter, which isn't water soluble. Actually it'll,
it'll separate quite well from water. It doesn't mix well with water. So whatever your body uses
essentially will get used for that process. Like vitamin C, it'll be used for collagen
formation or maybe some antioxidant, um, properties, but then it'll just get rid of the rest. So even
if you're taking 10 times the amount of vitamin C that your recommended dose, you're going to pee out
uh, you know, the, the remaining, you know, nine X of what your body doesn't use. Um, and at looking
at the literature, like my mom says, if you compare people who take vitamin C for a cold versus people
who don't, then you notice no significant difference between the duration of the cold or the symptoms.
Am I saying that correctly? That's correct. Yes. Yeah. And we will, we will find some studies for
y'all and post it. Cause I know a lot of people feel really passionate about things like vitamin C
and, um, I think I think a lot of people want this one, this wonder drug, this panacea, this, uh,
panacea is a word that basically means like a cure all, but like this thing's going to do everything.
And anytime you ever hear this thing's going to do everything, your skeptical radar should kind of
light up because things are probably more complicated than that. And someone's trying to
sell you something they can, they can get a big profit margin off and vitamin C is one of those
really cheap things that you can make and you can charge for a lot of money. Um, and if it works,
that would be great. But in this case with common colds, it doesn't work as well as advertised. So
that's all we're saying. We want to give that caveat there. Um, so anytime we say something
works, it's not our opinion. We would love vitamin C to work on colds. Cause that would be a really
nice cheap mechanism, um, for it to do, but unfortunately it doesn't pan out. That doesn't
mean the vitamin C doesn't work for everything. It has specific uses just like anything in life.
Things have specific uses for certain problems. All right. My rant is over. Okay. What else you
got? Okay. So there are some non, what we call non-pharmacological, non-pharmacologic therapies
that can be used in the common cold things like vaporizers and humidifiers to humidify, vaporize
the air, make it a little moisture. It'll help with breathing. It'll help get rid of the crud in
your lungs and be able to cough it up better and stuff. And so that's one thing that you can do.
Um, you could use salt gargles, obviously salt, salt in water gargling it. It can help relieve
the sore throat symptoms, uh, breathe right navels, nasal strips that you purchase at,
at, you know, over the counter at the pharmacy or HEB or the grocery store or whatever. Um, they,
you know, they stick over your nose bridge and they actually pull your nasal cavity open and it
can help give you some relief as far as breathing and, and maybe your nose not running so much. And
again, it's a non-pharmacologic mechanism. Um, you can also use things like Vicks vapor rub that has
aromatic oils like menthol in the, the, the rub. You need to be careful with using it in kiddos
because you don't want them to ingest those aromatic oils. They can be toxic to kids, but
rubbing it on the chest can help kind of open up your airways and help you breathe a little bit
better and stuff. So, um, babies that don't know how to blow their nose, you can, you can get,
at one of the nasal aspirators, it's like that nasal bulb thing and you can, you know, use it to,
you know, to create suction to help the baby, the young child blow the stuff out of their
nose so that they can get rid of that as well. Yeah. Because mucus essentially is, is collecting
a lot of that virus or it should basically a lot of those droplets and then you're expelling it out
of your system. You basically want to limit the amount of virus that's in your system. So by getting
the mucus and expelling that out of your body, you, you want to do that as much as possible,
which is why you're saying like things like, um, Oh, what was the method that you said that increases
mucus production? Um, Oh, the humidifier. Yes. When you did it, yeah. You essentially want to,
you know, expel it out. Yes. Now cough it out. Yes. Yeah. Living in Texas, you get plenty of
humidity. So if you live in a place, it's very dry. Um, and it might also be good to get a humidifier.
Yeah. If you have aches and pains or low grade fever associated with the common cold, then you
can take analgesics like Tylenol, acetaminophen, or a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug like
ibuprofen. We want to avoid using aspirin in kiddos because aspirin has been associated with
a condition called rise syndrome. Rise syndrome is a pretty significant and it could be a potentially
fatal disease. It has encephalopathy, which means kind of a swelling of the brain. Um, it can have
some changes in your liver and you can have fatty infiltration into your liver and it can make
somebody really sick. And so they're just there. What investigators found was that there was an
association between kiddos who had fever or flu and using aspirin that they had an increased risk
of developing this rise syndrome. So aspirin is kind of a no-no in kiddos. So that's really good
to know. I did not know that. I think there are a lot of people out there who don't even like taking
things just inseds and in general. Um, I think there's a lot of fear out there that by ingesting
them, I think any pharmaceutical that there's going to be some downstream effect that could
potentially harm them. So what can you say to the people? Like if you're having aches and pains,
you know, what is, if they don't want to take something like Tylenol or ibuprofen,
like what would you say to those people who have concerns about those types of drugs and maybe
having downstream effects? Well, I think that taking something for a short term is not going to
be that awful. You know, you're talking about a couple of doses a day. I mean, there are limits
as far as how much Tylenol you can take per day and you don't want to exceed that. But certainly,
um, if you've got a fever, taking Tylenol makes you feel better because fever makes you not feel
so good. Um, but again, you just got to follow the limits as far as what's the guidelines and using it
discreetly, you know, not very often just as needed is, is going to be, I think, you know,
you know, as, as safe as you, you know, as safe as it can be unless you have some underlying,
uh, condition, like you had liver disease or you had renal kidney disease, you know, then,
then you may have some other guidances that your doctor might give you as far as using those
medications. Yeah. So these, these insets, these pain relievers, they are able in the short term,
by short term, you just mean when you have a couple of days, you know, a couple of times a day
for a couple of days, your body's able to metabolize those and the metabolites, AKA the things that
are created from your body, metabolizing them, aren't going to be harmful in the short term,
or they haven't been shown to be harmful in the short term for the most part. It just, it does
depend on underlying diseases that people might have. If you have a history of having a bleeding
ulcer in your stomach, then you're going to probably want to avoid taking things like aspirin or
ibuprofen and you could take Tylenol instead because they don't have that same kind of a risk
associated with it. Okay. Yeah. I think we should maybe just, uh, can you just give a brief summary
of why Tylenol and aspirin aren't the same thing? Like what, why is one better than the other?
I don't know. I shouldn't say better. Like where do they act differently to give somebody be like,
okay, if you're having liver problems, if you have an ulcer, you know, take Tylenol instead of, um,
ibuprofen. Right. So Tylenol, it can, it can reduce fever and it can control pain. It doesn't
have an inflammation. It doesn't reduce any inflammation or swelling. So it doesn't have
that type of an action. Does it act at the brain then? Does it just basically block the,
the receptors then? So yes, you're right, Josh. Um, Tylenol or acetaminophen does work in, at the,
in the brain, you know, and works on different, uh, receptors in the brain. Whereas something like
aspirin or, um, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, they more are working, uh, um, on, on other
enzymes that help to reduce prostaglandins, which causes inflammation. And so they're going to
target more inflammation. They can also reduce pain and fever, but they've got that extra
inflammation component that they work on as well. Gotcha. Okay. So let me just try to summarize
this for our listeners. So you have an inflammatory event, which is essentially your body responding
to the invasion of a pathogen, in this case, the common cold, and the inflammation is essentially
trying to aid you in getting rid of this pathogen, AKA the common cold. And so to reduce the
inflammation event, you can either reduce the inflammation itself and you can do that via
things like aspirin or nonsteroidal and NSAID nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, or you can
just dampen the signal that the body is sending to the brain and acetaminophen will essentially
just dampen that signal and say, Hey, I know you're feeling pain right now. I'm just going
to turn the volume of that down just a little bit. So inflammation is still doing its work.
You just won't feel this. The law, I guess you'll, it'll diminish the sensation of pain.
That is correct. You got that right. Yes. Cool. That's a great, I had no idea. That's a really
cool thing. I always thought that the ibuprofen and acetaminophen just acted the same way.
I guess they would be called the same thing if they acted the same way. So right. So,
and they end up with, you know, so the Tylenol is metabolized more in the liver. And so that's why,
if you, you know, if you take too much of it, you can end up with really bad liver problems and it
can kill you if you overdose on Tylenol. Whereas things like aspirin or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory
drugs, you probably heard more of, you know, they can cause gastrointestinal bleeding or they can
affect your kidneys in a bad way and stuff. And so that's just different, just different ways that
they're gotten rid of and different targets that they have that cause their adverse effects.
And too much should be defined. It's usually on the bottle, but I would say,
I'm trying to remember the milligram amount, but I feel like it's, do you remember the milligram
amount of how much you should not take in a day or in a given time period?
Well, it's going to depend. Some people will take NSAIDs because they have arthritis and those doses
are higher. But typically I'm thinking to treat inflammation or a fever associated with a common
cold. You're talking about taking one to two tablets, you know, every six hours, every eight
hours. So I guess I think a lot of people think, well, I'm just going to take more because the
pain hasn't gone away. I guess what, what, how many tablets would you say don't go beyond this for the
average person? You could, I mean, again, that it's going to be patient specific, I think, you know,
probably I'm thinking, you know, and again, each, each medication is going to be different as well
too. So I would say probably the two tablet, you know, rule every, I would say probably taking
eight or 10 tablets a day is probably going to be, you know, your, your max with, with dividing it.
It might not be eight and dividing it every, you know, six hours, eight hours. It might be six
hours, eight hours. It might be six tablets if you only take it every eight hours. So that's good to
know. I think for guides, I think people are like, what is too much? My pain isn't going away.
And that, that might just mean that your pain, you know, isn't going to be treatable with these,
with these drugs. And it might be another route, but usually with something like the common cold,
these have pretty good efficacy for, for diminishing that type, this type of pain.
Right. Yeah. If you're in that much pain, yeah. If you're that much pain for a common cold,
there could be something else going wrong too. So yeah. And as mom mentioned with arthritis,
just for all those nerds out there, itis means inflammation. So anytime you see a, the, the
suffix suffix itis, that means it's inflammation. So you essentially want to take something to
diminish that inflammation. If you wanted to do that. So arthritis is the inflammation of the
joints, which is why you might have to take higher doses. Okay. I think we geeked out on pain a bit.
So let's continue on. So we talked about the symptoms of the common cold. And we talked about
how to treat those, at least the pain. What symptoms are we on now?
Well, you can also use, there are some medications that contain local anesthetics for sore throat
pain, things like sepical, lozenges, or I think there are some sucretes that have a,
a something called di, diclonine in it, which is a local anesthetic. You want to be careful about
using those in, in young kids. In fact, you shouldn't use them in kids less than two, but,
but there are some things like that that can be used to just give you some relief as far as your
sore throat is concerned. They're over the counter. Okay. They're over the counter,
but they're not throat drops like what you would buy like Halls or no, no, they're these, these are
going to specifically have either benzocaine or diclonine in them. And so you'd have to look,
I don't have the list. I know sepical is one of them. And I believe sucretes has a, a product
that has diclonine in it. That's going to give you more local anesthetic type effects.
And what exactly is an anesthetic again? What does that mean?
It's going to kind of numb, you know, the area. It's just kind of kind of make you feel like that
you're, you can't feel the pain right at that particular time period.
Is that different than an analgesic?
It's a little bit different than an analgesic.
Okay. Cause I was here anesthesia and you feel like you're going to sleep, but it,
it just kind of numbs the area a little bit is kind of what this, these do and stuff. Yeah.
Anesthetics can put you to sleep, but not these per se, they're just going to kind of target that
throat area and kind of give you a little bit of relief when you have a kind of a tough sore
throat. Okay. So it's just kind of diminishing sensation. And if you think of anesthesia in an
operating room, you're diminishing all sensation, which is AKA knocking you out. Right. Okay.
Right. Cool. So yeah, those are over the counter. And then what about,
what about throat drops? Like what about things that will give you relief from your scratchy
throat or your cough or you can certainly use those, you know, everybody's going to have their
own favorite. They're not damaging per se. You know, again, the only ones you want to worry about,
not worry about per se, but just maybe use more caution with are going to be these ones that do
have actually a local anesthetic in them and stuff. The other things are just, they may have
menthol in them or just kind of just give you that, you know, keep, keep your, you're just as
comfortable as you possibly can be. Yeah. I know when I have a cold, I can go through a bag of those
throat drops. Is there a danger with going through like an entire bag of throat drops or is it just
in a day? Probably so. But, but yet, but I would have to look up, like I think that there are,
you know, I mean, any, anything in excess can cause a problem. So, so I wouldn't eat a whole
bag in a day, but you know, but there are probably some limits. I would just have to look that up.
So other things that we use commonly in treating a common cold or decongestance.
So that's going to kind of dry you up and you can either take oral decongestance or nasal
intranasal decongestance. Those are all over the counter, but remember pseudo ephedrine or
Sudafed is, is a medication that you have to ask the pharmacist for. It's been that way for about
15, 16 years because people just discovered how to make methamphetamine from using Sudafed. So
it's now, it's now kind of restricted as far as how much you can buy and how frequently you can
buy it. And you have to, you have to provide your driver's license. I believe you have to be 16
years old or 16 or 18 years old to purchase Sudafed. And again, it's a, it's a, it's a fairly
high number that you can buy, but you, again, it's for a particular time period and then you
can't buy it again. So yeah, that was, that's a Sudafedrin is one of my favorite drugs. It really
does open up that airway and just makes things and it feels like you've just widened the highway of
your, your throat. It is quite wonderful. Right. If you have high blood pressure though, or if you
have glaucoma, which is kind of pressure in your eye, or if you have other types of heart disease
or an enlarged prostate, taking a decongestant can kind of exacerbate those diseases. It can make your
blood pressure go up. It can make the eye pressure in your eye go up. It can make it harder for you
to pee if you have an enlarged prostate. So in some patient populations using a decongestant,
especially an oral decongestant, might not be as good of an idea. And you're going to have to use
some other options, like maybe a breathe right strip or using a, you know, a humidifier and stuff
at the other things, because it might, it could possibly cause more harm than good. So. That's
well said. We should remind people to remember if, if there is no side effect, there probably is no
effect. Remember you're taking, you're putting something in your mouth and then it's going into
your digestive system, which then will put the drug into your bloodstream. And as you know, with
your blood, it pretty much goes all over your body and it's going to take that drug all over your body.
And the way that drugs work is that they have molecules, we call them antigens, and they will
essentially just attach to different receptors on different cells in your body. And just like a key
fitting into the lock of the door, if the key fits and it turns, it will open that door. It doesn't
care if it doesn't want you to open that door, it will just open it. And so sometimes something that
will relieve something in one area of your body might exacerbate a problem in another area of your
body, depending on who you are, which is why those pharmaceutical commercials usually have those lists
of side effects at the end of it, because everybody is different. Um, it's, and a lot of people think,
Oh, you know, the pharmaceutical companies are just trying to, you know, basically hide all their side
effects. Sometimes they are like sometimes pharmaceutical companies really do want to hide
all the bad sides to their drugs because they're in the business of making money. But at the same
time, just be aware of basic biology is that if you put something in your body, it's going to
interact with something and that there's always going to be trade-offs, which is why we want y'all
to be educated of what things can do bad or good. And you can make an educated decision. And depending
on who you are, and if you feel like this drug would work well for you, something like Tylenol
or Sudafed, but you feel like you've heard that you have an enlarged prostate or another condition,
that'd be good to talk to your doctor before taking something like Sudafed because you don't
want to make that condition worse. Um, so you could also talk to your pharmacist as well too. They
will know that as well. Pharmacists are pretty cool. So, um, another thing, let me just bring out
another point as we're talking about adverse effects associated with decongestants. So oral
decongestants like Sudafed or the other, the other decongestant that you can find in, um,
cold products that's not behind the pharmacy counter is phenylephrine. It, it, it's not as potent
as Sudafed and I don't find it to work as well, but it is available and it can, it can do the,
you know, it, it can decongest you as well too. So, but, um, yeah, I think there's a product
that's out there called broncade. Um, I think it's, I've used that before when I couldn't get
Sudafedrin and it was, yeah, it wasn't as effective. Yes. So there are some that have that in there,
but the other thing I want to bring out to, uh, to, to your knowledge or to the forefront as well
too is when you use nasal decongestants, things like Afrin, um, you want to limit that to no more
than using it for three days because the nasal decongestants can cause rebound congestion.
So you could end up getting congested again and it's actually due to the medication and not the
disease state itself. So how does that work? The answer isn't really well defined in the literature.
I can speculate that it may be because it causes a prolonged use, can cause irritation of the nasal
mucosa, which then could cause more nasal congestion, but that's just a guess on my part. I'm not
really exactly sure. Cool. That's good. But I like the three day rule. It's just like, yeah, use them
for three days and then, yeah, kind of after that, you might be causing more problems down the road.
Right. So you might need to use some other mechanisms to open that nasal passage. Excellent.
All right. So we talked about, yeah, nasal decongestants and, um, yeah,
yeah, you can, you can use antihistamines in combination with a decongestant to treat a cold,
but you would not want to use an antihistamine by itself to treat a cold because there's not a lot of
histamine production in a cold per se. And so antihistamines aren't going to really help your
symptoms that much. Um, I think there are some studies that show that the combined use can
provide some extra benefit. Why that is, I, I, I'm not exactly sure. So, okay. Yeah. That's good to
know. Uh, a couple of other things. You can get a prescription for a drug called it protropium.
It's an intra nasal spray. It's an anti-cholinergic agent. So that means it's kind of like a drying
agent, you know, it's going to kind of dry things up. It is a prescription though, and it's going to
be for those people who get pretty significant colds and have a lot of nasal congestion and need
a little bit of an extra help or boost, you know, to kind of control that symptom. Okay. And that
would be something you have to get prescribed by a medical professional. Yes. Um, the last thing I
wanted to mention, and this has come into play, uh, maybe, maybe it's been around for 20 years now,
but zinc, um, zinc has, has, there's a, there is some evidence that if you, you, if you have high
zinc concentrations, that they could cause the, that rhinovirus, that is one of the common causes
of the common cold to not adhere to the nasal passages. And so it may block viral replication,
but the data are not really, really strong. And it's a really got only a modest antiviral effect,
but still you can take something like Zycam. The thing when you take something like that,
it's Zycam comes in a bunch of different dosage forms, chewable tablets and syrup, a nasal spray.
When you use it, you have to give it every two hours, um, so that you get these higher
concentrations of zinc, but it could reduce the number of days that you have a cold by a couple
of days. Yeah. Cause you're essentially trying to stop the virus from replicating as rapidly. So the
zinc can block the mechanism by which they replicate. Right. And essentially you'll, you'll,
yeah, get rid of it faster. So if, so what, what's recommended is that you would like to
start taking the zinc as soon as you start noticing those cold symptoms and it may help you to get
over a cold a little bit faster. Yeah. I remember reading about with, um, I think with, with SARS
COV-2 is that remdesivir is a, a drug that blocks viral replication. Uh, but you have to take it
really early on because if it spirals out of control, then there's no point. Right. So you,
if, as soon as you start feeling symptoms, it is imperative that you start taking, uh, Zycam
for a common cold, uh, because yeah, if it's too late, there's kind of no point that you have so
much virus in you that it's just going to be better to take other drugs. So this is a very
early onset. Right. Um, don't get paranoid every now and then you get a scratchy throat and
you might feel a little bit of a headache, but I think if that stuff persists, then it's a,
it's a good idea to take. Right. Right. So not a bad idea to have like some laws. If,
if your throat is scratchy, you have some lozenges around that maybe have some zinc in them
because that'll give you a bit of that benefit early on. Right. You can start early on. Right.
So, so pretty much, you know, we know that, uh, we've got, you know, a couple of, uh, different
kind of classes of agents to use to kind of control the symptoms associated with the common cold.
Um, I would say that when we think about, uh, how the common cold could be misunderstood,
I'm thinking that primarily when I think about that, it's like, how can I tell if I've got a cold
versus an allergy or, um, the flu or pneumonia? And they do have different types of symptoms.
And so I think that, um, that is definitely a way to figure out whether or not you've got one versus
the other. You're not going to have a lot of fever associated with a common cold or with an,
with an allergy, but you may have fever, significant fever with the flu or with pneumonia.
And so, so different symptoms are going to help you figure out what you got going on.
So there might be some other more serious, um, uh, symptoms that you're feeling associated with
other diseases, things like pneumonia, things like the flu. Um, like if you have a fever,
it's most likely going to be more likely to be a flu than it would be a common cold.
Right. Right. If you've got productive, uh, coughs, uh, your, your spit, your sputum is
a crummy color. Um, you've got chest pain. You may have pneumonia, you know, so, you know,
and that's the, you're obviously, you're going to need to get some help from a healthcare provider.
Pneumonia sounds like a great future episode. Yes, it does. Yeah. Cause there's also, there's
viral and bacterial pneumonia. That's correct. Okay. That's correct. Uh, yeah. We also have a
handy chart of, of, uh, essentially what's misunderstood between a common cold and a
couple of these other ailments that seem similar. And we will post that on our, our Twitter and
Instagram for y'all, um, so that you guys can see that and take a look at that. Um, yeah.
A couple of, there's just a couple of last points that I'd like to make about the common
cold before we move on to the next topic that we have. Um, one is that remember that over the
counter cough and cold medications are not to be used in children younger than four years of age
because they haven't been shown to be safe and effective in that, that, um, age group. Also,
as much as we want to think that codeine or other, uh, things that help us to stop a cough, um, are,
are beneficial. There have not been evidence to support codeine or other anti-tussles,
anti-cough medicines for use in the common cold. So people may take them still and, um, and they may
think it works, but for the most part, evidence hasn't shown that. And then, um, um, remember
antibiotics are not effective for the common cold. I think those are great takeaways. Um, so for all
those suffering with a common cold, um, essentially some of the things that you can do before you get
it is to wash your hands, um, stay away from people who you, you know, have the common cold
or at least are exhibiting symptoms. Um, and once you do get it, um, kind of follow these guidelines
of when you have these symptoms to try to reduce the time you can take some stuff with zinc to maybe
reduce the duration of the, the, the disease itself. Um, also taking things like Tylenol or
ibuprofen, depending on who you are, might be better as well as a Sudafedrin or some other drugs.
So we hope that you're not suffering from a cold right now. Um, but if you are, despite all this
pharmacological advice, also don't forget to pamper yourself, take some rest. Sleep is huge. Um,
getting a good night's sleep, being very well hydrated as well is, is huge as well, um, because
you need a lot of fluid for your blood to move a lot of these healing agents around. Um, that's
just good advice in general. If you can get good sleep, get good hydration, um, get a little bit
of physical exercise, um, you know, prior to getting cold. Um, and also, you know, do things
that make you happy. Um, especially when you're sick, you know, find that nice mug of tea that
you really like or that comfort food that just makes you feel good. Uh, cause you know, it's not
good feeling bad. Uh, I know that my mom made me plenty of soup, uh, when I was, when I had a cold,
um, um, back when I was a kid and not so much anymore, uh, cause she doesn't live at my house.
But, um, with that being said, we hope that you enjoyed this episode. Um, if you like what we do,
feel free to subscribe to this podcast, um, any of the platforms that you get your podcast. Um, also,
you know, head to our Instagram and our Twitter for any of the graphics and papers that we use
to support this episode. If you want a deeper dive and feel free to leave us a comment, we will try
our best to answer any questions that you have. Um, we try to cover as much as we can, whatever
pops into our brain, but we know there's, you know, so much more to know in this world, which
is what makes it so interesting. Oh, so with that being said, uh, my name is Josh and I'm Jennifer.
And this has been your, an episode of your mom on drugs. We'll see you next time.