Cold and flu myths busted

Here's what you need to know...

Colds are not caused by going outside without a raincoat: Sorry, mom. You meant well, but the only way to catch a cold or flu is by picking up a virus. Going out into the rain without a jacket, or with wet hair, does nothing to facilitate transmission. It's true, though, that we are more prone in the winter. Viruses are more easily shared when people are clustered together indoors.
Feed a cold, starve a fever? Nah. Feed 'em both: This advice is probably repeated as often as it is jumbled. But you wouldn't want to starve either virus: At higher temperatures the body produces more interferon, a protein that helps prevent virus reproduction. The body is like a furnace, and to create heat you need calories. When people have chills it is because they don't have enough calories to bring up the heat normally … by feeding them, they will have enough calories to raise the temperature, increase the interferon, and kill the bugs. Drink lots of water too.
Viruses survive on surfaces: You don't have to wait to be sneezed on to catch a cold or flu-you can pick the virus up right from a counter top, keyboard, telephone or other surface. Rhino-viruses, the family of germs responsible for most colds, have been shown to survive on a surface for several hours or even days. The concentration of virus attenuates; that is, the potency is less and less as time goes on. But you need very few viral particles to trigger an infection. Even if there's just a little left and you happen to touch that door knob or coffee cup, the virus can then survive on your hands for quite a long time. Then all it takes is a little wipe on your nose or eyes and whatever little bit of virus on there will go to town very quickly.
Vitamin C is ineffective for preventing or treating cold or flu: A review of 30 studies on vitamin C put to rest a few dozen years' of overconfidence in orange juice. Vitamin C cannot effectively prevent or cure common colds. Some benefit has been shown for extreme athletes exercising in extreme cold, but since vitamin C is only known to offer a biological benefit in certain cases, for the average adult, it's not worth it to supplement.
We can't cure the common cold: The problem is that there are hundreds of varieties, or serotypes of rhinovirus in addition to other viruses that cause the common cold. Of those hundreds, just a few are causing widespread infection at any point in time. The serotypes change so rapidly that they're impossible to keep up with. A vaccine would have to be specific to the current serotype, and by the time the virus was identified and an antidote developed, the active serotype would have changed.
    TNN

Cold WAVE: The only way you can catch a cold is by picking up a virus