Cariños, it's time to brace ourselves for cold season. And I'm sure you have a few tried and true tricks up your sleeve for keeping yourself and your family healthy, but it never hurts to learn a few more. Especially some that are a little less conventional than say, washing your hands regularly. You'd be surprised at some of the ways you can protect your family from getting colds.
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For example …
1. Bring your own pen. It's a good idea to carry your own pen around. That way when you need a pen at say, the bank or grocery store, you can use yours instead of one that has been passed around and contaminated by who knows how many people's cooties.
2. Keep your hands off of rails. On escalators, on stairs, in prisons (don't wanna leave anyone out). This is one that my mother instilled in me right after I took my first steps and she's right. Those rails are full of all kinds of nastiness that could get you sick.
3. Eat your mocos. Yuck, I'm totally not going to do this one and if you do it and I see you do it, I'm going to get totally grossed out, BUT there is a theory that eating your boogers may help build up your natural defenses. No, thank you!
4. Do a nasal rinse. I totally believe that this works. We have a neti pot and I have been able to successfully stop an oncoming cold with it. Basically you use a saltwater solution to clean bacteria and viruses out of your nasal passages. It takes a little getting used to, but I'm telling you … it works.
5. Cough into your elbow. Okay, so you know that coughing into your hands just gets your germs all over your hands, right? And then you transfer your germs onto the next thing or the next person you touch. That's why it's so much better to cough into your elbow because you're not grabbing anything with that part of your body. And no, coughing into your elbow won't keep other people's germs from getting onto you if they've sneezed in their hands, but think of it as leading by example. You are helping to change people's habits one sneeze and one cough at a time and before you know it, the entire world will be coughing into their elbows and it will all be because of you! So teach your kids to cough into their elbows.
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