How to avoid colds and the flu in 5 easy steps: Step 4

Step 4: Eat Soups and Congees

Aside from avoiding certain foods when you are just catching a cold, you can help your body by eating soup at mealtime. Eat brothy soups with vegetables and chicken. Chicken soup with rice is a good choice. So is miso soup with vegetables. The traditional food to eat in China when you've caught a cold is a rice soup called congee. Congee is a great comforting food that's easy to make.

Soup helps you in three ways. First, all the ingredients are well cooked and served hot—which aids your digestion. Second, when you cook soup, many nutrients that might otherwise get lost in the cooking process get captured by the broth. Third, if you're eating nutritious soups you're eating less of the foods that undermine your immune system.

How to Make Congee

For a quick version of congee simply cook rice in water and/or broth at a ratio of 5 (water/broth) to 1 (rice) at a low simmer as described below. Add things like cooked chicken or fish and chopped onion, ginger and garlic when ready to serve.

This delicious recipe is from Epicurious.com

Ingredients:
3 1/2 to 4-lb chicken, cut into serving pieces, including back and giblets (exclude liver)
10 cups water
3 tablespoons Chinese rice wine or medium-dry sherry
3 (1/4-inch-thick) slices fresh ginger
3 scallions, halved crosswise and smashed with flat side of a heavy knife
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup long-grain rice
Accompaniment: fine julliene of fresh ginger, thinly sliced scallions, and Asian sesame oil

Preparation: Bring chicken and water to a boil in a 5-quart heavy pot, skimming froth. Add wine, ginger, scallions, and salt and cook at a bare simmer, uncovered, 20 minutes, or until breast meat is just cooked through. Transfer 1 breast half with tongs to a bowl and continue to cook stock at a bare simmer, skimming froth as necessary, 2 hours and 40 minutes. Meanwhile, cool chicken breast long enough to remove skin and bones, returning skin and bones to stock.

Cool breast meat completely and tear into shreds. Chill shreds, covered, and bring to room temperature before serving.

Pour stock through a large sieve into a large bowl and discard solids. (you should have about 8 cups: if less, add water; if more, cook longer after adding rice.) Return stock to cleaned pot and add rice. Bring to a boil and stir. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered until consistency of oatmeal, about 1 3/4 hours, stirring frequently during last 1/2 hour of cooking. (Congee will continue to thicken as it stands. thin with water if necessary.)

Season congee with salt. Serve topped with chicken and accompaniments.

How to avoid colds and the flu in 5 easy steps: Step 3

Step 3: Temporarily stop eating and drinking these things: coffee, alcohol, sugar, dairy, wheat and raw foods.

Once you realize that you are on the verge of a cold it is important to avoid coffee, alcohol, sugar, dairy, wheat and raw foods for a few days until you know your cold has passed.

This step might be a difficult one for some people to follow—why give these things up if you aren't feeling that bad yet? Remember, the goal here is to avoid getting sick. By following these steps you might get lucky like me and not get sick for 3 or 4 years! Isn't that worth giving up your favorite items from this list for two to three days three to five times a year?

Think of symptoms like a scratchy throat or runny nose as a call for help from your body. Considering all the things your body is doing without you consciously having to be in charge of or act on (breathing, pumping blood, digesting food, providing immunity, etc...)— is it too much to ask for you to help ward off this invading cold? Mostly what i'm suggesting you do in Step 3 is stop ingesting the things which actually thwart your immune system. You can do it! Be a team player! Stop aiding the bugs — start aiding your immune system!

Why avoid these foods?

• Coffee is dehydrating and can make a sore throat worse.
• Alcohol is also dehydrating, it can make a fever worse, and it hinders your immune function.
• Sugar decreases the ability of your immune cells to kill bacteria.
• Dairy is mucus forming, which can increase congestion in nasal passages, throat and chest.
• Wheat allergies are often undiagnosed and can cause low-grade hay-fever-like symptoms after eating. Try cutting what out when you're sick and see if it helps you. Also, white flour has a high glycemic index and so may suppress immune function in the way that sugar does.
• Raw foods are harder to digest than cooked foods. When you're getting sick, the easier it is to get your nutrition the better off you'll be.
  

How to avoid colds and the flu in 5 easy steps: Step 2

STEP 2: Start taking the classic Chinese herbal formula Yin Qiao and large doses of vitamin C

Yin Qiao is one of the classic formulas in traditional Chinese medicine used to help drive out a cold that is just getting started. It is formulated specifically for illness with flu-like symptoms such as a sore throat. However it is a good choice for the initial onset of the common cold as well.

Yin Qiao (sometimes spelled Yin Chao) can be found in health food stores such as Whole Foods and New Seasons. Yin Qiao is for acute conditions and should not be taken long term. Dose as directed on the package. Additionally, drink 2 to 4 packages per day of Emergen-C Lite (sugar free) or Emergen-C Immune Defense for a few days. Other Vitamin C supplements will work fine, too. The important thing is to have large doses of Vitamin C (2000mg - 4000mg per day).

Airborne, an over-the-counter supplement designed to boost immunity, is an effective product that acts similar to the combination above—probably because they share many of the same ingredients. I've had tremendous success with Yin Qiao and Emergen-C and they are the less expensive option. Airborne has the advantage of combining the herbs and vitamins in 1 package and is more widely available (Walmart even has a version of it).

Either way, buy these items, keep them on hand, and use them at the first sign of a cold!

How to avoid colds and the flu in 5 easy steps: Step 1

When I moved to the Pacific Northwest 11 years ago I was getting sick 4 to 6 times per year. I was catching the common cold and flu and would feel awful for 1 to 2 weeks at a time. Some colds would linger for more than a month.

An amazing thing happened to me when I started acupuncture school - the number of colds I caught and the length of time I was sick dropped dramatically! Today I get colds less than once a year—I've even gone stretches of 3 years without getting sick.

I have learned five important lessons —five steps that you can take to dramatically reduce how often and how badly you get colds and flus.

STEP 1: Learn to recognize and take action at the first sign that you're getting sick.

The first thing you need to do is recognize the early signs of a cold. For me, this is easy—whenever I'm starting to catch a cold my throat begins to feel a little scratchy and uncomfortable. Often my ears feel a little strange and my nose may get congested, too.

You need to pay attention to how your body feels when you're starting to get sick. The sooner you realize you are catching a cold and take preventive measures, the more likely you'll be to reduce your symptoms or better yet, avoid the cold all together.

Here is a list of common symptoms many people experience at the start of a cold:

Early Signs of the Common Cold or Flu

Scratchy sore throat
Runny nose / nasal congestion
Fever
Itchy or full feeling of the inner ear
Cough
Sleepiness
Irritability
Achiness
Loss of appetite
Congestion or sputum in the throat or chest

What many people do when they first experience these symptoms is... nothing! People either don't recognize them as the early warning signs that they are or they hope that the symptoms won't progress to a full blown cold. Denial is classic at this point - no one wants to have a cold or curtail their normal activities. What most people don't know is that at this early stage they can often prevent themselves from getting sick.

Once you suspect a cold is coming, take action! The following steps can often prevent colds—and limit their severity and duration.