The following letter contains an explanation of why hot sauce and OJ can reduce and shorten the symptoms of a cold.

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Re: Cold Killer

Alex,

Sorry about your being under the weather. At this time of the year, one is likely to get a cold or a flu. I have learned a way to stop colds and flus from getting worse. The following is based not only on logic and personal experience but on the fact, which I recently discovered, that there are similar products for sale in drugstores.

  1. When you are sick with a cold or the flu, everyone including doctors, mothers, and grandmothers tell you that you should drink lots of liquids.
  2. It has been shown that Vitamin C helps one get over a cold or the flu, well, maybe the symptoms. (Symptoms are what matter which is like the difference between owing money and someone hounding you to pay up. If the disease or illness is not bothering you, you don't mind it.)

A question that is an analogy: If you put gas in your car's gastank but the gasline is blocked, will your engine run? No. Likewise with putting water and vitamin C in your stomach. What if your body's gaslines are blocked?

The gaslines of your body is the blood system which delivers water and nutrients to your cells. Cells are the engines of your body.

  1. What if your blood vessels are constricted (closed) rather than dilated (open)?
  2. What if the membranes of your cells are blocked or only half open instead of maximally opened?

If your vascular system is constricted or your cell membranes are impermeable then no matter how much water and vitamin C you ingest, they will not get to the engines of your body. There is a simple way that one can optimally open one's blood vessels and cell membranes.

Do you like hot peppers? Have you ever noticed that when you eat hot peppers, you start to sweat? The capsaicin molecule is what makes a pepper hot.

  1. Capsaicin is a vasodilator. It causes the blood vessels to dilate which thins the blood vessel walls. Thinner walls means more water can cross the vessel wall into the interstitial regions between vessels and cells. This is why you sweat. (Because the evaporation of water (sweat) lowers surface tempeature, people living in warm climates eat spicy food so as to sweat. The evaporation cools their bodies.)
  2. Capsaicin increases cell membrane permeability.

Thus, my young sick friend, if you want to get over a cold or flu faster, you want your water and vitamin C to get into the engines of your body, that is, your cells. For more than 30 years, I have been taking a glass (8oz) of orange juice and two tablespoons of hot sauce when I sense a cold. I have been feeling better within fours and healthy the next day.

Beyond my personal experience and logic of how it works, I have learned that there are products sold in drugstores for colds based on hot sauce.

Best of health to you, and take care,

 

bob