Hallo! It's cold season now, and I read this article about common colds. It was really cool, but really long, and I know most of you kiddos have the attention span of a house fly, so I thought I'd copy just the best parts here:

Scientists aren't the only ones with ideas on how to stop a cold. Hard science may be more accurate, but fringe science is more interesting. Who knows? Maybe some of these remedies will work for you.

Keep lots of houseplants. These increase humidity in your house, and cold viruses don't like humidity. Also, houseplants produce negative air ions known as anions. Ions are gas molecules that carry an electrical charge. Positive ions--known as cations--seem to have negative effects: fatigue, irritability, and upper respiratory problems. Negative ions have positive effects. So maybe lots of houseplants can reduce the number of colds you get. (Incidentally, smoking, synthetic fibers, VDT screens, and central heating or air conditioning deplete air ions. If you work in a big office, you're more likely to get a cold. My advice: quit your job.)

Practice selfless love. Immunoglobulin is a key element in the immune system. Lots of it in the blood helps you resist colds. Harvard psychologist David McClelland discovered something curious. When he showed a film about Mother Teresa to a bunch of people, their immunoglobulin level went up. This happened whether the test subjects admired Mother Teresa or not. (Some didn't.) What counted, McClelland said, was the fact that his subjects believed in the sincerity of a quality Mother Teresa radiated. He dubbed this quality "selfless love."

Exposure to selfless love, therefore, may increase your resistance to colds. If mere exposure to selfless love helps you, imagine how much protection you could get from practicing selfless love! But come to think of it, if you're practicing selfless love in order to get fewer colds, it's not really selfless, is it?

Personally, I can't wait for a cold to strike so I can try some of these remedies! After all, I've heard it said that if you leave a cold untreated, it can drag on for a week, but if you take immediate, aggressive steps, you can get rid of it in just seven days.