Can you stop yourself from catching a cold?

Well, you already caught it it seems. To prevent catching it you need to do things like avoid touching your face.

If indeed you have a cold, most colds start off with a scratchy throat and then within 48 hours change over to the whole congestions thing, then the good news is a typical cold lasts about a week. So you should be better in time. If you had caught it three days later you would be in the middle of the worst of it, if indeed you have caught a cold. So, your timing is actually lucky if you were going to get it.

Get plenty of sleep. Sleep is the body’s time to heal. Eat healthy foods like dark green veggies and fruits.

Stay away from your boyfriend! Literally, do not sleep next to him, do not prepare food for him, if you give it to him he will be miserable in Disney. Assume you are developing a cold at least for the next 24 hours and see where it is going.

If you develop a fever and the sore throat persists for 72 hours, get antibiotics, you will be better by Disney time. But, “scratchy” throat usually is not strep, it usually is a cold. Antibiotics will not help a common cold.

Hopefully you just feel very tired since you are busy and have not had enough rest lately. A good night’s sleep might cure feeling a little under weather if it is not a virus causing it.

@JLeslie I’m praying that it’s just stress and lack of sleep. I’ve taken some zinc, Vitamin C, and drank some tea. Hopefully I can balance my schedule out and get more sleep. I’m so busy this week that I probably won’t see him anyway so that’s a good thing (though I’ll miss him). Thanks for your advice :) hopefully this goes away

I take zinc lozenges every time I even feel a hint of me getting a cold. I swear by them. I do tend to get some cold symptoms but they are much, much more mild and doesn’t last nearly as long.

@cutiepi92 I hope it is just exhaustian. I always worry before a big event or vacation that an illness will ruin it. I am paranoid for a week before.

Get lots of sleep, drink lots of fluids. And try not to be too disappointed if you end up getting the cold – there’s not much you can do about it anyway. Just have as much fun as you can, and don’t stress out about it not being the perfect holiday that you had imagined.

Agree with the Rest bit. A couple night’s worth of good rest would help out. I also found that that ever since I started using hand sanitisers, I haven’t gotten a cold and that’s at least three or four years ago.

Have fun either way!

it’s definitely illness and not stress :/ my throat feels even worse this morning

@seekingwolf my mother has told me the same. I took some zinc last night and this morning and have a bag of zinc lozenges to carry with me during the day lol.

Everyone says get sleep :/ I am just kind of upset that this week is my heavy project week (it always is before Spring Break) so usually this is the time I have late hours. Hopefully, my group members for my respective projects will understand that I need to stay on a very set schedule so I can at least get 8 hours each night. I normally only get 5–6 so that may be a challenge. I will try though!! Thanks everyone, I want to get this knocked out by next Monday

Well, there is a saying, you can treat a cold or not and in a week you will be better. Basically it means colds tend to run their week long course no matter what you do. Although, extreme lack of sleep can make things worse. I am assuming you do not have a fever? If not, then the sore throat should go away in a day. I still say you will be better for Disney. Are you flying there?

5–6 hours is not enough sleep, unless you actually are feeling competely rested when you wake. There are a few people in the world who do just fine on smaller amounts of sleep. Lack of sleep is the best way to catch a cold. Also for me, when my iron is low I tend to get sick more easily,

@JLeslie yeah it’s only a sore throat. Nose isn’t really running.

Take echinnacea (two every few hours) and Emergen-C (twice a day), it will limit the severity and shorten the illness.

@cutiepi92 I’m betting by tomorrow morning it will be running.

I pour gallons of hot tea down myself, use Nyquil throughout the day to stay asleep, and when I’m tired of tea, I go immediately to oranges or orange juice.

@KNOWITALL Tea is great, because it gets you lots of fluids without sugar. I’m the same – tea until I can’t stand it anymore, then juice.

A sterile indestructible sealed bubble with its own photosynthesis system to replenish oxygen, and a replicator with an inexhaustible energy source to produce food and to recycle waste products.
Or death.

@glacial I haven’t even had a minor cold in over three years now. I’ll keep it up…lol

I’m going to disagree about hot tea and OJ while your throat is sore, heat increases inflammation, and the acid can be irritatingnin orange juice. Once you move onto no sore throat andnstuffy nose then by all means have hot tea and OJ. Especially the tea can be very soothing, along with soup and other warm liquids.

@JLeslie I’m kinda mad you were right lol. Next day my nose was running and it reached its peak on Wednesday. It’s Thursday and I still feel like I did yesterday but I took a day away from school to sleep (literally slept 13 hours) and I at least don’t feel letahrgic like I did all during the week. Bad news is that my stupid boyfriend doesn’t like listening to me and insisted on “taking care of me”. Now he woke up this morning with a sore throat. I don’t know what to tell him other than sleep :( I too stay away from orange juice and just take vitamin C tablets because I’ve always found orange juice painful. I do however drink warm (not hot) herbal tea.

@cutiepi92 That’s because you didn’t do the OJ, it’s a combination of oj, hot tea, and Nyquil. I also sleep in the guest room when my husband or myself are not feeling well to prevent germs from spreading. lol

I usually can.

The first symptom I get of a cold is postnasal irritation, which presents as soreness in the roof of my mouth.

If I start taking Zicam as directed within 4 hours of that presentation, then the irritation doesn’t progress and is usually gone within 24 hours.

@cutiepi92 I am going to let you slide because I think you are young. I know 45 year olds, hell 60 year olds, who can’t seem to remember that a cold the majority of the time starts with a sore throat, then after a couple days gets better, and then, ugh, super congested. You had and will have many colds like this, and so does everyone else. For most people each time they are surprised how it goes. i will never understand it.

If my husband or I begin to get sick I take my toiletries out of the bathroom and move into our guest room. If we are in a one bedroom situation I sleep on the coach for at least two days. I take care of him ahd vice versa and immediately after wash our hands thoroughly and go to separate rooms. Those two days are worth not being sick for 7.

we don’t live/sleep together. I’m just afraid he was too close to me during meals and such idk. He likes to hug and stuff even though I told him not to :(

@cutiepi92 Same difference. His mom probably did all those loving take care of him things when he was sick. Mom’s are less likely to catch a cold. Even so, my mom after I reached about age 8 stopped doing that doting mother thing when we were sick, because she didn’t want to get it. When I was first married and didn’t want to be near my husband when he was sick he was pretty annoyed. Now he is happy not to get sick or not to get me sick so I have brought him over to my way of thinking. We rarely get each other sick.

Your boyfriend getting sick will suck way more than if he had just stayed away from you for 2 days. However, he might already have caught it before you knew you were sick since you are contagious before you know you are coming down with something.

The good thing is it’s just a cold and Disney is not very hot this time of year so he will be able to walk around most of the day even if he is under the weather. Plus, Disney has very few wild rides that would be very annoying when congested. Just bring lots of tissues. LOL. And, bring medicine…the kind from behind the pharmacy counter even though it is not a prescription that is antihistamine plus decongestant combined. The pharmacist can help you. Don’t get a drug that has meds he doesn’t need like cough medicine. In other words don’t get some sort of cold and flu drug hap hazardly that has all sorts of stuff in it. However, you might want to bring some ibuprofen for him to take in the middle of the day. All this of course as long as he is not allergic to any of those things or has some sort of medical problem that is contraindicated.

thanks @JLeslie you’ve been a really big help through all of this :) your advice is really appreciated! As of now, it’s not that bad since we jumped on it kind of early with all the advice everyone has given so hopefully it isn’t horrible by Monday…...it means he will have it for five days? Maybe that’s enough…..*shrugs

@cutiepi92 I hope so. :) Could be. Definitely by day 6 it will be almost gone.

Are you flying? He must take the drugs and spray Afrin before the flight if he is still congested. He can burst his eardrum, especially on decent. Even worse you have connecting flights and have to land two times within a few hours.

@JLeslie yeah we’re flying. We’re in GA though so the flight is less than 2 hours. I’ll make sure we prepare him before the flight though, thanks for the warning

@cutiepi92 It doesn’t matter that the flight is short if it is a jet, going above 10,000 feet, he still needs to consider pressure in his ears, because it mainly is a problem that last 15 minutes before you land. From GA the flight is probably 40 minutes, so I am not sure what type of plane you will be on, still most likely you will go up to a pretty high cruising altitude. If he isn’t still very congested that day, and he might not be by then, he doesn’t need to be paranoid he just might be uncomfortable. He can just take whatever medicine he is taking now. All that doubly sure stuff I mentioned with afrin and pills might be overkill. Personally, I do the overkill if I am flying to be on the safe side, but my left ear tends to bother me a little in general so I don’t like to add anything on to that annoyance I already have.

No. The virus is too “smart”. Otherwise we’d already have a vaccine.

@mattbrowne If I remember correctly there are somethng like over 200 rhinoviruses and that is why it is so difficult to make a vaccine for colds? I’m not sure if that is scientifically the actual reason or just something I heard that stuck with me. It makes sense that would be the reason though.

Well we’re back now!! We still weren’t feeling too hot but we made it work lol

@JLeslie The flight going had him messed up about halfway in (it’s a 1.2 hour flight). Coming back, he didn’t have any problems. He wasn’t really congested that day but his ears were killing him :(

All in all, we dealt with it. Morning were awful, felt like waking up from death ughh. But after about an hour or so actually being up and getting dressed and whatnot, we were able to enjoy the full day outside :) Nagging persistent cough for both of us, but it wasn’t so bad that we didn’t have an amazing time :) I love u guys and the community is so helpful and kind (mostly anyway lol) so here is a picture :)

Glad you had a reasonably good time.

The length of the flight doesn’t matter. Did he take the drugs and spray Afrin like I recommended? If not, next time this happens try it, it should help. Hopefully you never have to deal with it again.

@JLeslie – I think it’s both the large number and the way they keep mutating.