Last month I was having my mildest sickness ever so I decided to share my knowledge on self-tried scientific things to do and supplements to take before and during illness.*
I was sneezing and there was a very little bit of that sick feeling but besides them, there are no other symptoms although people at the office and in my family had runny noses and fever.

Zinc

Number 30 on the periodic table zinc is the only effective supplement against cold and flu according to A Short Guide to a Long Life which is a book by David B. Agus M.D. I read that book three years ago and only this part really remained in my memory mostly because I used this information.

I don’t use zinc regularly but take a 10mg pill when:

• People around me have symptoms
• My sleep becomes very irregular and/or short
• Traveling
• In any case which I believe suppresses my immune system

In addition, when I have the feeling that the illness is coming I take 10 mg pills twice daily, one after breakfast and one before I sleep. Currently, I am using Nature’s Bounty’s 10mg zinc Caplets.

Warning: Zinc can be neurotoxic at extreme levels and zinc poisoning has the same symptoms with the common cold.

Magnesium

I first started taking magnesium while I was following a ketogenic diet plan six months ago. After I stopped following the diet I also stopped using magnesium. However, after watching a Youtube video of Jonathan Levi, I started to use magnesium again.

His main argument was that because of the agricultural “innovations” magnesium content of foods have decreased and nearly 80% of American people are magnesium deficient. In addition, magnesium is an essential mineral for us mainly because it is used in neural transmissions along with its other functions.

Instead of using it regularly, I track my nutrition online and take a Solgar Magnesium with Vitamin B6 Tablet containing 133mgs of magnesium per tablet. I used to use My Fitness Pal for nutritional tracking but recently switched to Cronometer.

Ginger

Ginger contains many antivirals, especially “sesquiterpenes” which are chemicals with specific effects against the most common cold viruses, the rhinoviruses. (Cold And Flu: Conventional vs Botanical & Nutritional Therapy)

Most of the time I make a tea combined of linden flower, chamomile, and cinnamon. Then add freshly cut ginger to the mixture. After drinking, I usually chew and swallow the ginger slices as it lets me absorb more antivirals.

P.S. They have a very spicy taste so be aware.

Chinese Way of Curing Common Cold

In his blog, Tim Ferriss describes one of his experiences in Beijing.

In Beijing, I’d doubted the traditional Chinese approach to reducing fevers (bundle you up in winter clothing and force you to drink near-boiling tea or water until you sweat profusely), which ended up working like a charm, so I’ve been willing to test ideas that could have some clinical basis.

I couldn’t find a clinical basis for this method but the last time I got sick, nearly 3 months ago, I experienced a similar situation: During my sleep, I woke up suddenly. I was feeling too hot and sweated a lot. I got panicked and took a shower. The next day there was a little to no symptoms.

Cold Exposure

Nobody likes cold showers neither do I but they can be an effective mechanism of preventing illness. Last year, I discovered a man named Wim Hof aka The Iceman. He is an extreme athlete and states that with his breathing technique and cold exposure you can enhance your immune system.

In 2007 Wim Hof climbed to the 7200m altitude at Mount Everest wearing nothing but shorts and shoes.

You can find out more about his methods on his Youtube channel and personal website. I don’t practice his breathing techniques but I can confirm that regular short interval cold exposure enhances your immunity as well as having other benefits such as energizing you and increasing fat burn.

Those are the supplements I use and methods I practice most of the time in order to prevent illness and recovery quickly in case I got sick. There are some other methods I am testing and I will write about them in the future.

FURTHER READINGS:

• A Short Guide to a Long Life by David B. Agus M.D.
• Zinc for the treatment of the common cold: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.
• Efficacy of zinc against common cold viruses: an overview.
• Jonathan Levi’s Youtube video on not getting sick again.
• Cold And Flu: Conventional vs Botanical & Nutritional Therapy
• Tim Ferriss’s blog post about 4 anti-cold cocktails.

*In any case, you shouldn't take my words as medical advice. Those are only the information I got from other sources and results got from self-experiments.