Why do I get a cold every time I see my grandkids?
You might answer: “Well, duh, it’s because they have colds.”
But that’s not what I mean. Yes, they do get colds frequently. But why do I catch every single one, without exception? My ex-husband doesn’t always catch the colds. My son and daughter-in-law don’t always catch them.
I do.
And my colds tend to last quite a while. Also, I’m especially vulnerable to losing my voice or at least getting hoarse.
It doesn’t matter whether I take those zinc tablets or Vitamin C or force fluids or take it easy. I had lots of colds as a child, and then again when my son was little. Shouldn’t I have gained some immunity over the years?
And yes, I’m aware that viruses keep morphing and today’s cold isn’t the same as yesterday’s cold. Yet isn’t there at least a certain amount of cross-immunity?
I don’t buy this answer – for the simple reason that I got every single one of my son’s colds when I was a young parent, and I got just as sick back then as I do now:
… [G]randparents are likely to get sick — sometimes much more so than anyone else in the family.
“They’re usually not as micro-immunized as the parents,” says Dr. Judith Turow of Nemours duPont Pediatrics, Lankenau. “Kids are around their parents all the time, so they’re receiving little bits of the illness as it develops. But if grandparents come into the picture when the kid is already sick, they get a big bolus of the full-blown virus.”
Bah, humbug.
I don’t have grandchildren but I do have weekly exposure to second graders. That has been the case for almost 20 years. I get upper respiratory infections on a regular basis. To boost my immune system my doctor recommended making a tea from fresh ginger (boil slices until the water becomes pale yellow), local honey and some lemon juice. She said that it was also anti-inflammatory.
I have been drinking this every day since January. I am just now getting over another infection complete with barking cough. But on the bright side, the really bad pain from the arthritis in the base of my thumbs is gone. And it’s delicious so there’s that.
Janet:
Sounds yummy, anyway.
Mr Whatsit gets more of our grandchildren’s colds than I do. If I get them, it’s usually three days after his, and my colds are usually milder than his. Who knows why?
As a young mother I never got colds, though I did get bronchitis or pneumonia (usually just the walking kind) with horrible death-warmed-over coughs that lasted weeks, almost every year. Who knows why??
Sometime in my 40s, the bronchitis/pneumonia mostly went away, though I will still get bronchitis once in a while when things are stressful. But as soon as those went away I started getting full-blown old-fashioned colds, instead. I’m honestly not sure which is worse. Yet again, who knows why???
Anyway, I’m sorry about your cold, Neo. They are miserable. Janet’s tea sounds comforting!
I used to get frequent respiratory infections and regular cases of bronchitis. When our last beloved cat died, my bronchitis outbreaks left with her. (I also have to have a fake Christmas tree. No real greens.)
I take a daily probiotic and, since Covid, quercetin. I haven’t had many bad colds in the last few years. I suspect at least one was Covid, but I don’t know.
I’ve had good luck with the ZiCam products, in particular the nasal swabs. You can start these a couple of days ahead of your contact with the grandkids, and they’re pretty reasonable. But I do find that colds, when I get them, are less severe when you load up on ZiCam, Vitamin C and D, and zinc.
It was explained to me in this way: every cold virus (rhinovirus) is unique thus the immunity you get from each particular one does not immunize you from the others. As to why you suffer more severe reactions to the colds you contract probably has more to do with your unique biological makeup than the particular virus.
Since my Wife retired from Teaching in 2002, we have had very few colds. Before that, at least once a year
What Kate said about Quercetin.
And fresh ginger’s always great (in teas, soups, stir fries, braised vegetables—e.g., broccoli—etc…)
Also, try a gel (or tablet) of oregano oil daily or every two days.
Good luck!
Buying a car cured a lot of my colds.
I stopped taking public transportation.
Huxley, yes another YUGE reason I detest public transportation! And detest government pushing for it to effectively replace personal vehicles.
Huxley, yes another YUGE reason I detest public transportation! And detest government pushing for it to effectively replace personal vehicles.
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Anyone pushing that over the last 40-odd years has been stupefyingly ineffective. Jimmy Carter left office in 1981; you can zone back in now.
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There is no defensible reason to ‘detest’ public transportation and it has great utility in certain venues.
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After the war, local authorities elected to invest in bus services whose schedules are baffling to anyone who does not take a discrete set of routes multiple times a week. (They also clot up road traffic). Another is that patterns of urban development since the war have left people’s residences at a considerable distance from commercial throughfares and have made such thoroughfares unfriendly to pedestrians. Another has been investment in intrametropolitan freeways and a disinclination to finance their maintenance with toll revenue. Another has been a general preference for passenger car commuting and a disinclination to finance road maintenance with vehicle registration fees and fuel excises. The net effect of these factors has been that public transportation outside the largest agglomerations exists for the most part to provide employment to aspirant bus drivers. For years I lived in an inner ring suburb of a top-tier city. The buses ran quite infrequently except at peak hours, they tore down the posted schedules expecting everyone to check their smart phones, and when you got on the bus it was just you and the driver. In that area, it’s time to shut down the service and offer the impecunious discounted gift cards for ride sharing services.
Try Cold Away. It’s worked for me and my wife.
@Art Deco:The net effect of these factors has been that public transportation outside the largest agglomerations exists for the most part to provide employment to aspirant bus drivers.
This. Public transportation is a jobs program. Like education, in the thread about how college students can’t read and write; the system is run for the benefit of its employees and administrators and not to serve the public’s actual need.
I’ll allow that the bus stops are very convenient for drug dealers and the homeless.
And then there’s bullet trains, specifically Sunny Cal bullet trains…to Nowhere!
Not so much a “jobs program” as—if “Biden”-scam(TM) is any indication—a HYUGE, gazillionesque, state-of-the-art, money-laundering operation!
(Are them Dems talented or what!!…?)
File under: Newsom-scam (since he MUST demonstrate his Democratic-Party-Presidential-Candidate BONA-FIDES) or maybe even Pelosi-scam…(though one might well “embrace the power of AND” in this case); heck, let’s call it “All-In-The-Family-scam”…
It’s possible that you have a less-effective immune system. When I was a kid, I got everything that went around the block. I remember an aunt saying, “That kid is always sick!” (She was afraid she would catch something from me, and didn’t mind that I heard her say it.) Even in my adult years, I would get 2 or 3 colds every year.
Then, about 15 years ago, I was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease. Now, I get an infusion of human immunoglobulin (so-call IVIg) every six weeks, and I rarely get a cold. Doctors sometimes refer to IVIg as “an immune system in a bottle.” Unfortunately, that is not something you get for a somewhat-less-effective immune system. I don’t know if there is anything that would help you, but you might try asking you family doctor for a referral to an immunologist.
A year ago, a friend gave me some Emergen-C for a cold. I was initially skeptical because I had tried large doses of vit. C in the past. However, looking at the ingredient list I saw it had a large amount of various B complex vitamins also.
About 8 months ago, I had been diagnosed with hyponatremia or low sodium. Potentially, anything that might be lost through urination such as sodium water soluble vitamins could be an issue for me. I started adding an electrolyte to my water, and reacquainting myself with the salt shaker. I noticed that the electrolyte additive also contains B-complex.
So, I’ve been adding vit. D3, C, zinc, and the electrolyte with B-complex to my multivitamin for a while, and haven’t had any infections for this modest time period. The 2nd half of 2023 was a time of serial infections for me.
Have you considered Ivermectin? It’s effective treating coronavirus, and, if I understand correctly, the common cold is a coronavirus. There’s a pre-exposure protocol for when you know you’re about to be around them, as well as a early treatment protocol for when you start to feel sick.
Ivermectin by body weight twice a month . Ymmv
I believe only SOME colds are coronaviruses, maybe 20%. I second what others have said about Quercetin (along with zinc tablets). I have had maybe 1 or 2 colds in the last 5 years, both very mild. There’s also the usual preventives: hand washing, gargling with Listerine, etc. I’m not diligent about this and haven’t needed to be.
It may be dependent on how many mRNA injections you got. The third, and definitely the fourth, causes a flip of the usual IGg3 IGg 4 levels in most people which persists, which makes people more vulnerable to respiratory viruses.
There are number of immune enhancers, such as quercetin, chaga mushroom powder, and black seed oil you can take as supplements.
Also, nasal lavage and gargling both with decrease your pharyngeal viral load.
Frequent handwashing was shown over forty years ago to be the single most effective intervention to decrease respiratory virus infection in military barracks.
(IIRC–every four hours under the sergeant’s supervision. Far more effective than masking, which basically does nothing.)
Zinc lozenges or nasal zinc applications are more useful than swallowing zinc at disrupting the enzyme RNA viruses need to replicate.
Lee:
I did not have a third or fourth booster.
Zinc lozenges, which I’ve taken for years in order to reduce the severity of colds, seem to have little to no effect so I’ve stopped using them.
I’m practically Lady Macbeth with the handwashing.
I actually don’t get many colds aside from the ones I get from my grandchildren. But that’s good for several a year.
Your grandchildren love you SO MUCH.
Kate:
Yes, they’re very big on sharing. 🙂
I use Aquegel Zinc, a gel barrier applied in nose. Also Xlear nasal spray which has xylitol. Now most recently at doctors recommendation, Nowonder nasal cleanser from Israel; nitric oxide. Seems to help. I use to catch everything all the time. No longer. Really think keeping the nose clean is key.
I work around college students and I have grandchildren. I very seldom get colds and I am 74. I think I just have a very robust immune system. Even when I got covid, it was one and half days of a mild fever and then I was better.