Health Claims

Zinc lozenges that dissolve properly in your mouth can help you get over a cold faster, cutting down how long you're sick by up to a week.

Pelargonium sidoides, a plant-based supplement, might help make cold symptoms less severe and help you get better faster, according to some medical studies.

Taking vitamin C pills might help a little with colds, especially for people who are under a lot of physical stress or don't get enough vitamin C from their diet.

Black elderberry might help you feel better faster when you have a cold by reducing how bad your symptoms feel and how long you're sick.

Taking echinacea supplements might help you avoid catching a cold, according to scientific studies.

Taking zinc lozenges when you first start feeling sick with a cold might help you get better faster and feel less miserable.

Scientists say there's a special protein called VPO1 that, like another protein MPO, can make a powerful cleaning chemical called hypochlorous acid inside our bodies.

Certain proteins in blood called VPO1 can kill bacteria using chemicals like chloride and hydrogen peroxide, but this process gets blocked by other substances that stop these proteins from working.

There's a special protein in our blood vessels that can make a chemical called hypochlorous acid when it mixes with hydrogen peroxide and salt, and scientists showed this by testing it on other...

Taking vitamin C after you already have cold symptoms doesn't make your cold shorter or less severe compared to taking a fake pill.

Taking vitamin C regularly might help you get over a cold faster—about 8% quicker for adults and 14% for kids, according to a big study.

Taking vitamin C pills cuts your chances of catching a cold in half if you're doing really tough activities like running marathons, skiing, or military training in freezing cold places.

Taking vitamin C pills every day doesn't really help prevent colds for most people, according to research.

Taking vitamin C after you already have a cold doesn't really help you get better faster or feel less sick, according to several big studies.

Taking vitamin C regularly might help you get over a cold a little faster—about 8% quicker for adults and 13% for kids, according to a big study.

Taking vitamin C supplements might cut your chances of getting a cold in half if you're under a lot of physical stress, like running marathons, skiing, or doing tough military training in cold...

Taking vitamin C pills every day doesn't really help prevent colds for most people, according to studies with thousands of participants.

Taking zinc supplements like gluconate or acetate doesn't help reduce how long a cold lasts or how bad the symptoms are, based on a study with 281 adults who had colds.

Zinc lozenges don't help reduce how long colds last or how bad they feel, whether you catch a cold naturally or in a study where they give you a cold virus.

Taking zinc lozenges doesn't make cold symptoms less severe, according to a study with 273 people who were given cold viruses.

When adults with cold symptoms take zinc gluconate lozenges, their colds might get better faster, but this only worked in a special test setting and not with real-world colds or different zinc types.

Zinc lozenges need more than 75 mg of zinc per day to help fight colds. If you take less zinc or use lozenges with certain ingredients like citric acid, they might not work as well.

Taking zinc acetate lozenges for colds, at doses up to about 90 mg per day, didn't cause any major side effects in studies with nearly 200 people.

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.