bobquasit | Diary of a Cold

Tuesday September 28th (evening): At my D&D game, an unmistakable tickling in my nose and sinuses makes me cough frequently. The GM does the same. Something's clearly going around.
I realize that I'm in the first 24 hours of a cold, and use Zicam as soon as I get home. Quick explanation: Zicam is a homeopathic cold remedy that comes in a number of forms. I use the nasal swab form; it's safer. It's a swab coated with a zinc + ? gel that you swipe around inside each nostril, repeating every four hours. It must be started within 24 hours of the first noticable symptoms, and it apparently shortens the length and severity of the cold to 1/3 normal.
Wednesday, September 29th: Symptoms progress slowly. They are restricted to my nose and sinus; itching, tickling, coughing, and some sneezing.
Thursday, September 30th: I'm definitely sick. Sneezing, lots of stuffiness, coughing, and my thoat is starting to get sore. I take a lot of citrus vitamin C drops.
Friday, October 1st: Getting worse. Teri drives me into work (I probably should have stayed home), but I leave early. Mild fever, chills & sweats. Continue with Zicam, vitamin C, and ibuprofen as needed. My voice changes (as usual), becoming very deep and raspy.
Saturday, October 2nd: The cold travels down to my throat, and makes inroads on my chest. I rest a lot. The fever gets a bit worse, about 101.
Sunday, October 3rd: Deep aches when I cough. I start to wonder if this could be an early case of the flu.
Monday, October 4th: The cold makes a final stop in my intestines; cramps and general unpleasantness. I stay home from work. My throat and nose are much better, and my chest feels better too. I take my last Zicam that evening. Note: they've changed the packaging on the swabs. The new containers are really awful; there's no way to open them without getting the gel on your hands. Somebody screwed up.
Tuesday, October 5th: The storm has passed. Still a bit of sniffling, an occasional cough or sneeze, but no pain; I feel fine.

So basically this was a one-week cold. But really only the middle 3-4 days were bad. And frankly, my colds are usually much worse. Normally when they go into my chest they stay there and get nasty; I develop bronchitis (almost every time) and my lungs fill up with bubbling fluid. That's particularly bad, because it becomes very hard to breathe. The liquid in my chest fizzes and pops so loudly that it is clearly audible when I open my mouth! Freaky.

But each time I've used Zicam that hasn't happened. I'm generally dubious about holistic remedies - hell, I'm still annoyed that chiropracters are covered by health insurance - but this stuff really does seem to work. There are some studies which apparently back that up, although I'm always suspicious of studies that a company uses to tout its products.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Strictly speaking, if it has any Zinc in it, it isn't a homeopathic remedy, given the way homeopathic dilutions work.

However, the zinc in Zicam probably isn't homeopathic - there have been several lawsuits claiming that using Zicam caused anosmia (complete loss of sense of smell), and this is apparently a known side-effect of zinc.

http://www.homeowatch.org/legal/zicam.html

http://www.adrugrecall.com/zicam/zicam.html

I'd suspect that, like no small number of 'homeopathic' products, zicam is either produced so haphazardly that it may contain zinc, or else deliberately does so. (Because these products are unregulated, they are often doctored with real drugs, or else just contaminated from shoddy manufacturing).

The manufacturer's website doesn't make clear just exactly what is 'homeopathic' about Zicam; it claims zinc is the active ingredient but says nothing about the dilution. It may just be using 'homeopathic' as a marketing device.

Diary of a Cold

Right.

Right.