Colds vs. Superstitions

I watched one of Derren Brown's shows today. One can watch it on Youtube here. He showed how superstitious people can be by making them try and earn 100 points. He didn't tell them how they were to earn them, and so they were left to figure it out for themselves. What Derren also didn't tell them is that the points were completely random, so it didn't actually matter what the people did. If they would have stood still for the entire 30 minutes, they would still have gotten the 100 points. And so they tried a whole bunch of crazy things, hula-hooping, putting bananas onto yellow dots, moving bean bags, and the points counter went up randomly.

At the end Derren asked them how they received points. They came up with some crazy, and completely untrue suggestions. It's just like when someone might have won a big game, and they were wearing special socks... those socks had nothing to do with the win, but that person might consider them to be lucky.

I have a cold. I searched the internet and it took a while to find out how to treat a cold. Well there's loads of information on how to treat your child if it has a cold, but little about how to treat yourself. Supposedly we all know that we must stay warm to avoid catching a cold, and treat it by taking vitamin C, Echinacea, zinc, antibiotics, rest and keep warm... right?

WRONG!

I found this article on netdoctor.co.uk.

Let's find a quote: "There's no effective way of treating an ordinary cold to make it go away quicker. If the sufferer has no other diseases than the common cold, and it goes away in one to two weeks, there's no reason to see a doctor. Since a cold is caused by a virus, antibiotics are not appropriate."

It says nothing about colds being caused by running around without your socks on. Nothing about taking vitamins, or not exercising. We simply do what we can to try and fix a problem even if there is no way to fix it.

And, as far as I know, homeopathic "medicine" is nothing more than a money making scandal... unless distilled water can really cure diseases.