Drug Companies and "Cold Medicine"

[MattSAU2XR8]

Trouble is that if you have a cold/viral infection there are billions of non life threatening viral particles growing in you nose/sinuses/lungs and floating around in your blood for a few days to a week. This makes all the surface membranes sore and leaky. Hence runy nose, snot etc.. There aren't any effective anti-viral drugs for most of them (except a few, eg. Influenza) so you just have to wait for your immune response to clear them up. I'm sure if you took some speed (vasoconstrictor and reportedly enjoyable) and heroin or other opiate (painkiller and reportedly enjoyable) you'd feel much better while waiting for your immune system to do its thing. Which is what the old Codral was - Codeine and PE (poor cousin of speed). PE got restricted/banned because you can make it into speed and approximate instructions can be found/extrapolated in most first year uni organic chemistry books. Best bet in 2015 is to lie on the couch and have your wife/significant other bring you regular 'cold and flu' pills and snacks and just tough it out for a few days.

[2011G6E]

Originally Posted by Crazy Dazz

The only thing my wife ever shares with me is her germs. I have a terrible cough and fever, and when I get sick I get cranky.

You'd think, after all this time, and the Billions invested, the drug companies could have come up with something to make us feel better.

For as long as I can remember, we have been encouraged to "Soldier on with Codral." I THINK I can vaguely remember when it actually contained ephedrin. Certainly, for most of the last 30 years it has contained psuedoephedrine. So I suppose for some of us, taking speed did make us feel better.

Now it has been replaced with Phenylephrine, which too is described as a "decongestant." Which sounds good, God knows I'm congested, except its nothing of the sort. "PE" is a vasoconstrictor, it constricts your blood vessels. The argument is that by constricting the small blood vessels in your lungs and sinuses, there will be less potential for fluid build up, and less water available to make mucous.
Which frankly, sounds like a crock.
I actually take a vasodilator, to counteract hypertension, and it doesn't render me full of snot when I'm not sick.

And here's the other thing. PE has been tested, and shown to have NO effect as a decongestant (ie no greater than placebo). Yet the drug companies keep flogging it to us.

I have found ibuprofen seems to help the most, with the headaches and maybe the fever.

The trick is, scientists have said there will likely never be a "cure" for the "common cold"...because there is no such single thing as "the common cold". It's a whole host of slightly different viruses and bacteria, all affecting every person differently...what works for one person may very well not work for another. That's why there's a hundred different cold remedies and treatments. No one medicine will "cure" it and most likely never can.

Same with the flu...every year it evolves and adapts, and there are many different strains. For the yearly flu vaccine, they have to virtually "guess" which is going to the the most common strain in the coming year and make a vaccine to suit. If they get it wrong...as they have before...it just feeds the anti-vaccination morons who say any vaccine is therefore useless. No...it just means a different strain reared it's ugly head unexpectedly.

With the cold, it's even harder...because there is no one "cold virus" they can't possibly formulate a vaccine, all they can do is come up with things to try and minimise the effects.


Just one of those lovely little things that has probably always been with humanity and most likely always will...

[Madaya]

I'm sure I have mentioned this before.
I'm a nicotine addict. Gave up smoking about 7 years ago but I still chew the nico.
Why am I still hooked?
I cannot recall having a proper cold or flu in all that time.
My doctors and work record would back this up.
I say 'proper' in that if I feel the symptoms of a cold, sore throat, runny nose etc,
I up the chewie intake and by the next day, the symptoms have gone. That might happen twice a year.