Home Remedies
I suppose I brought this on myself with my jerkish weather-related post a few days ago, but things in the East Bay have taken a turn for the worse. Cold rain, while hardly tragic in the grand scheme of things, has been quite a drain on morale... plus I think I'm coming down with a cold.
This lead to a heated debate in my head this morning about whether or not I should make coffee. Would it aid or inhibit the tiny rhinoviruses trying to take hold of my respirtory tract? Assuming that scientists have grappled with this question before, I went straight to the internet. And apparently, I'm happy to say, coffee gets a green light. Here's a somewhat-legitimate-looking press release from the latest issue of Food Technology. But if that isn't convincing enough, just google "common cold coffee". The number of hits in support of treating one with the other far outnumber the ones telling me it's a bad idea. So case closed.
We'll call that that big science conclusion of the week and leave things at that. Experiments be damned.
Comments
But how do you know it was not coffee's fault in the first place that you even have a cold? Maybe you should have been sleeping instead! :)
Posted by: A.J. | February 26, 2007 06:11 PM
Interesting. I've been grappling with this question myself, and have played it safe and stuck with tea. But c'mon -- that stuff barely works at all. After about a week I went back to coffee, consequences be damned.
Posted by: tom | February 26, 2007 09:55 PM
Yeah... the tea is clearly a waste of time. Sure, my box of trader joe's green tea swears up and down that it's all full of antioxidants, but I think fruit handles that just fine.
Posted by: jeff | February 27, 2007 01:39 PM