h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One of the most common ways of catching a cold is sudden changes in temperature.

If you travel by tube, when you go underground, undo your coat, take it off, remove your scarf after you have become accustomed to the temperature. When you reach your station, start to wrap up again and by the time you hit the street you will feel the benefit of that cosy winter coat.

I'm susceptible to sore throats (not through being naughty more's the pity) and I will usually wear a light scarf or polo neck all day through out the winter months.

Never leave the house with wet hair on a cold day.

Always keep your feet covered in doors.

Wear at hat if at all possible.


If you already have a cold, don't consume milk products - this aids the build up of phlegm.

Drink lots of water and watch the telly and don't move. If you can go home, do so. now's the time to let someone else look after you - you deserve it, you feel miserable remember?

If you're male, expect no sympathy from any female - they'll come up with the child birth pain thing and they do have a point.

Now how true is that stuff about clothing / changes in temperature? Winter is a time when we expose ourselves all the time to changes of temperature by going in and out, so any time we get a cold we could look back and find an occasion in the last day or two when we've had a change of temperature, and blame the cold on that. In Finland, a weekly sauna is common, and it's by no means uncommon to go straight out from sauna (80-90C) and roll naked in the snow (-10 - -20C) or swim in a lake. That's a temperature change of 100C, and yet the people who do it get fewer colds on average than the rest of the population.

milk doesn't help with phlem build up. Thats a common misconseption. Milk is digested like any other protein and is not specifically converted into nasal mucus.