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One of my favorite health researchers, ,Chris Masterjohn, Ph.D., has assembled a “war chest” of essential cold preventing supplements for you. Review his top four below, and find much more from Chris on his website linked at the bottom of this page. Also, read more from Chris here on Cholesterol and Heart Disease. Don’t miss it.
If you’ve been on my list for a full year, you’ve seen me make recommendations for cold prevention. Many of these are the same as last year, but there are some fresh updates. If you’re new to the list, this may be all brand new to you.
Preparing the War Chest
The most important thing to do in advance is collect the supplements you need for prevention and the ones that need to be used immediately upon the first sign of a cold. This is especially important for ones you can only mail order, since by the time you get a cold it would be too late.
Here’s what I myself stock up on and what I recommend you stock up on as well:
- Garlic Garlic containing 180 mg of the active constituent, allicin, has been shown to reduce the frequency of colds by 60-70%. Now Garlic 5000 provides over twice this amount of allicin in one tablet. It is currently less expensive on Amazon ($9.85) than iHerb ($11.46). Natural factors is also good, but more expensive on Amazon ($13.97) and iHerb (also $13.97).
- Zinc Acetate Lozenges The only zinc lozenges fully optimized for killing a cold (pay special care to my instructions for use below!). I recommend buying four bottles from Life Extension, in which case they are only $5.40 per bottle. See my instructions below for why you should always have more than one bottle on hand. You should also keep the Amazon Prime link on hand, where it’s almost twice as expensive but where you can get free next-day shipping when in a bind. As a complement to these, get a stash of copper glycinate for use as described below.
- Jarrow Zinc Balance For nutritional prevention and not for killing a cold, one a day is a great idea if you don’t eat oysters weekly or beef daily. It is less expensive on iHerb ($7.60) than Amazon ($9.99).
- Cod Liver Oil or Vitamins A and D Vitamin A became known as “the anti-infective vitamin” over the course of the 1920s through the 1940s after cod liver oil was shown repeatedly to lower the incidence of colds and other diseases. I believe that both fermented and non-fermented cod liver oils provide this benefit. Ultimately, though, it is due mainly to the content of vitamins A and D, so supplements can be used as well.
Read more from Chris here.
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