Ah-Choo Review

Ah-Choo! The Uncommon Life of Your Common Cold by Jennifer Ackerman

Learn all you want to know about the common cold; how and where you are most likely to catch a cold, what works or doesn’t to fight one, why you can catch more than one a year, and much more. 

Ackerman goes through all the different studies that have been done on the common cold.  How and where you catch one, what can factor into whether you catch one, what are the best ways to avoid catching one and research on all the cold medicines and folk remedies that claim to fight one off.  There are a lot of interesting facts here about what a cold actually does to your body, what causes the different symptoms, why it is impossible to create a vaccine and many others.  (Did you know that you swallow about a quart of mucus a day?  And that’s when you’re healthy.  I’m not sure I wanted to know that but now I do.)  It is very informative.   There are a few words like turbinates and cytokines that I’m not sure exactly what they mean but the general idea is always clear enough.  It goes through a lot of the commonly used medicines and supplements and tells you what research and science says about them.  It also gives you some pointers on what to do for various symptoms.  If you are interested in the science of the cold definitely read this. And if you can find nothing that helps you this book could be useful but if you have something that you swear works don’t read this. Sometimes the science does not support theory and you don’t want to lose any placebo effect that might be at work.