Cure for cold

[Zep]

Dear Zep,

You say the product has a minty smell/taste when you use it? Is that correct? Is one of the ingredients mint leaf or menthol?
Yes, it includes mint extract to improve taste.

Since it is a spray, what is the base liquid that you use to make the product? Demineralised water? Tap water? Medicinal alcohol?
It includes distilled water and it also has .01% alcohol

Have you tried making batches of the product WITHOUT one or two of the ingredients, to see if their absence makes any difference to the product effectiveness (i.e. they are a superfluous and therefore expensive addition to the product)?
I have made the solution without the active ingredient and gave it to my wife to use. Few weeks later she told me that I need to make a new batch since she does not feel that this one working. (Not a scientific proof)

Do any of the herbal products you add contain already known medicinal compounds, for example: astringents, alkaloids, alcohols, oils, etc?
The only one I am aware is alcohol

OK, let's walk through this.

First, a "mint flavour" usually contains oils, alcohol and menthol in appreciable quantities if they are going to be tasted by humans (we have poor taste and smell senses). But these are all possible substances that can affect the medicinal properties of the compound and how they are perceived by humans. Menthol perform an astringent function to mucous linings of the throat and nose (menthol is what is used to "clear the nose" in nose sprays). Alcohols are known antibacterial agents, and you add more to the mixture later. Light oils form a coating that protects inflamed mucous areas.

Second, herbals contain salts of various kinds, and "liquidising" them in water creates a light saline solution as they are leached out of the crushed plant cells (the alcohol helps this process too). Light saline solutions have been used since time immemorial for treating sore throats - it's why sick people were advised to holiday at the seaside in the olden days. Saline spray performs two functions - it is antibacterial to a certain extent, and the liquid itself tends to wash clean the infected area of dead cells and other matter arising from the infection (and on which any bacterial infection feeds).

Third, you have yet to distinguish between the infection of a cold, that is the viral infection itself, and the resulting awful symptoms. Cold viruses take a few days to advance their infection after being caught, but meanwhile the person is reasonably healthy symptomwise. Which means that when the symptoms appear, the virus has already been active for some time. What you seem to be trying to alleviate are the symptoms when they appear, not the virus itself unfortunately. Big difference - you need to do proper virological studies to truly examine viral infection rates and efficacy of anti-viral compounds. And there are a number of commercial cold-symptom relief measures already available. If your product happens to be truly efficacious against symptoms, these are what you will be competing against. But that alone would be a big market in itself, so good luck with that at least!

Fourth, your claim that colds are prevented could be easily put down to much more mundane reasons than you might suppose. You need to consider the method of transmission of the cold virus - usually it is airborne in tiny water droplets (coughs and sneezes spread diseases!). That means they are breathed into your body, which is why they lodge in the victims nose particularly and the throat. (This is much simplified, of course.) However if you are frequently washing these areas of your body with saline solution (see above) in a high-cold environment, there is the likelihood that you are simply washing any newly-lodged virus-laden material away before they can infect enough to overwhelm the immune system. In other words, you are making it far less likely that they will have a chance to take hold. The thing is, you can do this just as effectively with a plain light saline spray you can make at home for free.

Lastly, none of this is in the slightest homeopathic or paranormal. I think the vast majority of skeptics will allow that there are plenty of herbal remedies that could well do with serious investigation for medicinal properties. But it needs to be done carefully and scientifically so that we can be really sure what they do, how they work, and how to keep them safe.

 

[SezMe]

Well said, Zep.

It certainly helps me think through the issues.

 

[melba]

Zep has a good line of reasoning. A friend of mine told me a story about using a mouthwash (such as Listerine) as a cold/flu preventative--in the form of gargle or spary. From his anecdotes it seemed convincing....assuming that the mouthwash is effective because it kills germs, then that might account for why the minty spray also appears to work. I've found the same seems to be true of using hydrogen peroxide as a gargle/rinse (which I primarily use to prevent gingivitis).

But of course....none of this (and none of N2o2's DIY testing) has ruled out a placebo effect. In regard to hydrogen peroxide, very inexpensive and harmless, I say leave me and my placebo alone!

Meanwhile, N2o2, your latest posts have made me realize a way that you can sort of do a double blind test of your formula. But really, as I said before, and others also, this is really the domain of a medical researcher, who does this type of thing on a regular basis.
1. Develop a control or placebo formula that tastes/smells/looks like the original, but is missing some key ingredients. It should be designed so that you would not expect it to work (maybe just water, alcohol, mint oil?)
2. Set-up a number (say 50, or more) of empty bottles for the mixture. All should be identical, except each has a random number noted on the bottom.
3. Have an impartial observer fill half of the bottles with the real formula, and half with the control formula. This person makes records of which bottles (by identification number) has the real formula and which the control formula. These records remain sealed and confidential. You do not see these records, your research subjects do not see these records.
4. Assign these bottles of formula to 50 different individuals. Give them all identical instructions about the use of the formula. You can be honest and tell each person that there is a 50-50 chance they have a control bottle, but nobody knows who gets which--but it is important that you do not know who has which. (also: I would recommend that each person tested be indepedent of others in the study--that way sharing bottles won't contaminate your data. AND if there are people already familiar with your formula, you might NOT have them participate, as they might be able to detect whether they are getting the 'real' formula).
5. Develop a strict and well defined measure for determining whether each person develops a cold. This measurement should answer , in concrete terms, questions such as:
a. the time span of study
b. what symptoms are necessary to diagnose a cold
c. what duration of symptoms
d. what other medical conditions would be ruled out (e.g., allergy symptoms)
e. etc.
6. At the end of the study collect the cold measurement from each person (which, ideally would have been logged on a daily basis), as well as the number of their bottle. Then line up the data: compare which group the person was in with their rate of cold, then have your local statitician/researcher perform a t-test on this data. This type of statistical procedure helps to rule out chance results.


If you get significant results, you may have a highly marketable product--more official testing would be useful to confirm this. But even if the product does work, that does not necessarily make it eliglible for the JREF challenge--in that case not only would you have to prove that it works, but that it functions on a paranormal level.