Let me just start this article by saying I am not a doctor or a nurse. But I am quite good at Googling, and when I woke up five days before my big show at my synagogue with a sore throat, I panicked. I could feel my throat start to get a bit scratchy before I went to bed but I tried to ignore it and not freak out. But when I awoke at 6 a.m. and the pain started to get worse, I went into full on state of emergency mode.
You see, my pattern for sore throats is as follows. Redness gets worse to the point where I feel like I’ve swallowed knives. Within 24 hours the sore throat dissipates as I develop a full blown head cold. At this point, I can’t breathe at all through my nose, and I can’t taste food. Horrendous. Making matters worse, after about two days of the cold, the mucus usually heads down to my chest and I get stuck with a cough that keeps me up at night and sometimes even develops into laryngitis. Did I mention my show is in five days?
So, back to my story. I woke up this morning and raced down to the kitchen. And while the cat thought I’d be breaking open a can of Fancy Feast a few hours before his usual meal time, I headed to the cabinet that’s chock full of cold, sore throat and stomach bug remedies. So what did I do? Popped two vitamin C, gargled salt water and ate an Airborne throat lozenge. Since there are other remedies I’ve yet to try, I’m going to include them in this fave five, but do it at your own risk since I’m not desperate… yet.
1. Pop two tablets of vitamin C. Although after copious Internet searching I learned that Vitamin C is not that effective, I ignored that piece of information and immediately swallowed the required dosage.
3. Gargle with mouth wash and hydrogen peroxide. While you’d think that sounds like a recipe for a stomach pump, supposedly the anti-bacterial action in the hydrogen peroxide will kill off those throat germs.
4. Gargle with cayenne pepper. Okay, this one you must try at your own risk. At the Earthclinic website, I saw a huge response to the method of gargling with cayenne pepper powder. However, I also read a few of the mishaps — one woman swallowed the pepper, it went down to her stomach and she proceeded to throw up so much that she forgot about her sore throat. Another man swallowed it too and his head caught fire. Okay — not really but it felt like it did. There are over 300 testimonials from people who say it worked instantly but just be careful — put in an 1/8 of a teaspoon of pepper because if you over do it, you could turn into a red hot chili pepper and your throat will still hurt.
5. Eat a garlic clove. I have no idea why this works, but again according to the holistic cures for a sore throat, garlic is at the top. The thought of it totally grosses me out, but I guess I can stomach garlic over cayenne. Now of course, there’s always zinc lozenges, echinacea, hot tea, chicken soup and a crazy remedy that I had once with honey, lime, lemon juice and pepper — but I’m not desperate yet. Check back with me later in the day if the sore throat gets worse because if so, I could be trying all of the above. Do you have any surefire remedies to stop a sore throat and cold in its tracks? Let us know because at this point, we will try anything! Now if you don’t trust me and would like to consult someone more official on the web, then hit one of my favorite sites that’s chock full of great medical advice... WebMD.
