Scientist calculates an equation for the common cold: "Ten percent of your life is spent fighting colds." Wow. That makes sense though. I've read that common cold viruses need at least the population density of agricultural societies to persist endemically. No wonder the recent work on natural selection among humans shows that immune related loci exhibit strong signatures of recent evolution.
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I've just been…
I used to suffer colds once a year (early winter), until I learned to wash my hands at every opportunity, e.g. when visiting a toilet. The idea is to interrupt the most common route of infection: hand to nose.
I haven't had a cold for ten years.
I wash my hands after getting out of the subway morning and evening - the hand rails are a huge reservoir of germs!
I haven't had a cold / flu / etc. for at least 5 years (I'm 27), and I've been washing my hands more frequently -- and using moufwash after brushing every morning (looots of garbage in yo mouf). AND, keeping my toofbrush out of the bathroom (WHY would you store it there), in my room, as well as getting a new toofbrush every 2 months, like dentists say.
bathroom = bafroom
I almost never get colds or flu. People say that I'm more likely to get cancer. So it goes.
I know someone who takes an anti-viral supplement - monolaurin - and never gets any kinds of colds.
I too keep my toothbrush out of the bathroom, ever after I saw an episode of MythBusters and they demonstrated that flushing a toilet can spray aerosolized fecal matter up to 15 feet away (5 meters)...