Like it or not, cold and flu season is straight ahead and coming fast. Along with the great things about fall/winter – cooler weather, crisp breezes, fall colors, great holidays – often comes runny noses, fevers, coughing and sore throats.

Odds are good that everyone is going to get at least one illness between now and the spring, but there are things you can do to avoid getting sick. Here are some tried and true tricks, as well as a few that are not proven but anecdotal.

What would you add to this list?

• It sounds remedial, but as much as you can, avoid others who are ill. That sounds like a no-brainer – no one really wants to be around those who are sick, but the reality is, people come to work every day ill. Stay at least 3 feet away from anyone who is coughing or sneezing.

• By the same token, if you are ill, stay home. As important as you are in your job, no one is indispensable and you won’t perform at an adequate level anyway. So stay home and…

• REST. As much as you can, rest. This applies to you when you are healthy, as well. Sleep is your body’s way of repairing itself, and if you don’t allow your body to relax and rejuvenate,  you will burn out and then your body has no defenses to fight off germs.
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We associate catching a cold with dreary winter weather. So maybe it’s appropriate then that the sunshine vitamin – vitamin D – could be the savior.

According to the largest study to date that has taken a look at the link between vitamin D and its power against colds, at least 50 percent of the subjects involved had insufficient levels.

In the study, Dr. Adit Ginde of the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine and colleagues at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston found that people who had low blood levels of vitamin D were more likely to report having had a cold than those with higher amounts. To compound the problem, the risk of a recent cold or other respiratory infection seemed to rise as vitamin D levels dropped.
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There a doctor in Louisiana who thinks that people may get fat because of a common cold virus. So, you can “catch” obesity?

Dr. Nikhil Dhurandhar, of the Pennington Biomedical Research Centre, has been carrying out animal and human studies on the virus named Adenovirus-36.

“When this virus goes to the fat tissue it replicates making more copies of itself and in the process increases the number of fat cells, which may explain why people get fat when infected with this virus,” says Dr. Dhurandhar.
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