Like almost everyone else in the United States, I seem to have gotten some sort of cold.  Upon recommendation of my Dad, I tried some Theraflu and it is really pretty amazing stuff.  It soothed my throat and dried up my snot-maker.  I still feel pretty miserable though so I decided to amp it up a bit.

I remember my Grandpa sipping on ginger brandy when he had a cold.  He wasn’t a drinker at all so for him to hit the brandy, it must have been effective.  I headed to the local drug store tonight.  After slinking through the liquor aisle, I found a bottle of the exact brand of ginger brandy Grandpa used to drink.  Like Grandpa, I am not much of a drinker.  I had no idea how to drink brandy so I figured I would start with a straw.  It worked but it didn’t seem too tough drinking hooch through a straw.  I considered how they drink on tv so I decided to do brandy shots.  I can report that after 11 shots, I am not feeling any pain at all.  I have developed a red nose though.

Anyhow, I am definitely feeling no pain, but I don’t know that I truly knocked out the cold.  With a bit of scientific Google research, I found a few more home remedies to try out.  I read that zinc can shorten the life of a cold.  I didn’t have any zinc laying around but I know that pennies are made partly of zinc.  The above study said 15 mg of zinc is the recommended dose for men.  Pennies are 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper.  An individual penny weighs 2.5 grams.  Though I am in an altered state, I believe that means that each penny has 2437.5 mg of zinc.  As always, if some is good, more is better so I swallowed 2 pennies and another shot of brandy.  I also discovered that increased copper will help reduce LDL cholesterol and lower blood pressure…awesome!  And another shot of brandy for health!

I found a listing of all sorts of home remedies as well.  Some were easy to try.  One suggestion is that lemon and some honey mixed in water would reduce the length of a cold.  I have honey from my bees but I am a little short on lemons.  The kids still had some Halloween candy so I swiped a packet of lemonheads from their stash and chased them with a tablespoon of honey.  Now, I expect that some of this stuff will help my cold.  By the way, is a headache part of the recovery from a cold?  I am starting to get a bit of a headache and a cottony mouth…we’ll see how that turns out.  Anyhow, does anyone else have any home remedies that work?  I am in need!