How to survive cold and flu season

By Cali Doran

BELLEVILLE – Cold and flu season comes back with a vengeance every year. Loyalist College’s school nurse, Lauren Deans, says a wave of cold hit the Loyalist campus when students came back from Christmas break.

How can you prevent cold and flu season from getting the best of you?

“The biggest thing is prevention,” Dean said. “The second biggest thing is not to spread it around, and take care of yourself.”

The best way to prevent the spread of germs is to wash your hands after shaking hands with someone, and to also disinfect doorknobs and counters if someone in your house is sick, she said.

“An infection has a really hard time fighting off a wonderfully healthy body,” she said, adding that to maintain a healthy body it is important to sleep well, eat well and drink lots of water.

Vitamins are an important part of maintaining your health, and it is important to start using vitamins before the cold and flu season hits, Deans said.

The length of the cold and flu season “goes through different waves, and a lot of times it is a different sort of virus that attacks.”

“You can’t rush a cold, but you can make yourself feel better” through things like drinking tea, eating broth-based soups and getting lots of sleep.