Lifestyle Tips for Preventing the Common Cold

Preventing the common cold is a good way to maintain your health. It saves you a trip or two to the nearest urgent care facility. Keeping yourself free from illness can also prevent you from missing work or classes. If you want to learn how to ward off the common cold, here are some lifestyle tips to remember.

Getting proper vaccination

Having a flu shot each year can prevent the common cold from taking over. Anyone can get a flu shot from a local urgent care clinic. Pharmacies and doctor’s offices also offer this vaccine. Getting a flu shot before flu season can help strengthen the body’s protection against upper respiratory tract infections.

Cleaning and sanitizing as much as possible

Surfaces can harbor the common cold virus for hours. Anyone at school, work, or home can already have the virus. An infected person could sneeze on or touch different solid and porous surfaces. Infected people could touch the contaminated surface and then eat after.

Making sure the surfaces in frequented areas are clean and sanitized all the time can prevent the spread of the common cold virus. Getting an air purifier can also help take out the viral particles in a closed area. Keeping disinfectant wipes and alcohol-based sanitizers handy can kill unwanted pathogens anytime. Sanitizing humidifiers can aid in keeping the space germ-free.

Covering the mouth and nose

Making this a practice anytime someone sneezes or coughs can prevent anyone from contracting the common cold in an enclosed space. Cold viruses travel from one person to another through droplets. A tissue can catch the droplets. Disposing of it can keep the virus away from the mucous areas. Washing and sanitizing the hands can kill any remaining virus on the skin.

Avoiding direct contact

Being around people with the common cold makes a person vulnerable to getting sick as well. Talking in close proximity allows the virus-filled droplets to enter the uninfected person’s mucous areas. This will then start the incubation period in the uninfected person’s body. Keeping away from people with colds is a good thing.

This is difficult to do in a school full of kids. Young children tend to play, study, and eat together. Sharing toys and drinking from each other’s juice boxes make them vulnerable to getting the common cold. It is up to the parents and teachers to remind the young kids to avoid sharing when there is someone sick in class. Teachers could spot the sick students and send them home to avoid the spread of the cold. Parents can help by watching out for symptoms and then keeping their kids home until they get better.