Feed Your Cold!

Hey guys...yesterday through last night I began experiencing cold symptoms. Sucks, but ah well. Fortunately, I recently read some tips on menshealth.com for helping your cold leave quickly so you can get on with your life! Here are some, and get the info I got by clicking the title to this blog.

1. Eat a 1200 calorie breakfast. Apparently, eating big and early can help raise your levels of gamma interferon, a natural antiviral agent, by 450%. I have to admit, I was apprehensive since this is about 3 times the calories I normally eat, and I'm trying to stay lean, but in addition to my morning smoothie, I had a warm bowl of granola cereal which has granola, almonds, and raisins. I added a scoop of protein powder and some dried cranberries, and I think I hit this calorie count.

2. Stress out your symptoms. The article says that short-term stress can raise a level of an immune system protein, which could help. For me, I will aim to study harder today for my personal training test and hopefully that will help. Lord knows, though, I have plenty of stress trying to keep these bills paid and food on the table!

3. Drink Green Tea. Yay! I love green tea and already drink it every day. I'll look to raise the amount of cups today and tomorrow. The chemical, EGCG, found at the highest level in green tea, can stop some types of cold viruses from replicating.

4. Rest it out. This means getting a straight 7-8 hours of sleep. This is my hardest obstacle, but I will do my best, and I'm going to a new schedule next week, and I think I've got it worked out there.

5. Exercise. Fit people have less respiratory infections and better immune systems; this is obvious. So I will keep up what I am doing, but for me, this week is a lighter, recovery week anyways, but I'll still fit in some good workouts throughout the week.

Again, these are the abridged versions of the tips from the article, and I put my 2 cents in so you can see what I am doing. This cold should disappear by Wed for sure. Hopefully you don't get sick, but if you do, try some of this stuff. Thanks for reading, and have a great day!