Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
Zinc acetate lozenges work just as well for treating colds in people of different ages, genders, races, allergies, smoking habits, or how bad their cold is when they start.
Descriptive
Taking zinc lozenges helped more people get better from colds faster. For every 2 to 3 people who take them, one extra person recovers by day 5 compared to those not taking them.
Causal
Taking zinc acetate lozenges soon after cold symptoms start can help otherwise healthy adults recover from a cold about three times faster than if they didn't take them.
Even if you take zinc lozenges very soon after cold symptoms start, if the lozenges aren't made well, they still might not help you feel better faster.
If zinc lozenges dissolve too quickly in your mouth, they might not work as well as ones that dissolve slower, because studies that showed good results used lozenges that took longer to dissolve.
People who stopped taking zinc lozenges after 5 days got over their colds more slowly than those who took fake pills, which might mean stopping zinc makes cold symptoms come back a bit.
People who took zinc lozenges were much more likely to have a bad taste in their mouth than those who took fake ones, but over a third of zinc users didn't have any taste problems at all.
Quantitative
Taking zinc lozenges when you first feel a cold coming on doesn't really help you get better faster, according to a study on adults who get colds regularly.
A nose spray with nitric oxide can quickly kill over 99% of flu, COVID, and cold viruses in lab tests.
This claim says that taking lots of vitamin C, echinacea, garlic, or vitamin D doesn't actually help you get better from a cold, according to real studies done on people.
When you get a virus, your breathing cells need a certain chemical (chloride) to make a germ-fighting acid. If there's not enough of this chemical, your body might not fight off the virus as well.
Different zinc lozenges let your body absorb zinc differently. Some, like zinc acetate, let you use all the zinc, while others don't let you use any at all.
Honey helps people with colds feel better overall, cough less often, and have less severe coughs than usual treatments, according to medical studies.
Using saltwater nose rinses can help you get over a cold faster, cut down on how much medicine you need, and make it less likely to spread the cold to others in your home.
Rinsing your nose with salt water gives your nose cells what they need to make a natural germ-fighting chemical, which helps your body fight off viruses better.
Mechanistic
Cells in your breathing tubes make a natural cleaning chemical that kills viruses when they try to infect you.
Taking zinc acetate lozenges when you have a cold can help you get better faster, cutting down how long you're sick by about 2 to 3 days.
Zinc can stop viruses from copying themselves and spreading in lab tests, even for cold viruses.
Using Nasodine spray doesn't really shorten how long a common cold lasts—it takes about 10 days to get better, just like using a simple saltwater spray.
Nasodine is a medicine that's easy for adults to use. Some people get a little bit of nose discomfort that goes away quickly, but it doesn't cause any serious problems.
If you take Nasodine medicine soon after you start feeling sick with a cold, it can make your symptoms much less severe. Getting treated early is really important for it to work well.
This says that a nasal spray called Nasodine helps people with colds feel better in their daily lives. It claims that using Nasodine makes people 16% more comfortable compared to using a simple saltwater spray.
Using a povidone-iodine nose spray four times a day for 5 days might help reduce how bad a common cold feels by about 12.6% compared to a saltwater spray, but the results weren't quite strong enough to be sure.
A nasal spray with nitric oxide helps people with mild COVID-19 by reducing the amount of virus in their body over a week of treatment, making them less sick.