Health Claims

Rinsing your nose with salt water gives your nose cells a special ingredient that helps them make a natural germ-fighting acid to fight off viruses.

Your nose and breathing tubes have special cells that make a natural cleaning chemical to kill viruses when you get sick.

Taking zinc acetate lozenges when you have a cold might help you get better faster, cutting down how long you're sick by about 2 to 3 days.

Zinc can stop cold viruses from copying themselves and spreading in lab tests.

Rhinoviruses are tiny germs that make people sick with the common cold. They're important because they spread easily and cause stuffy noses, coughs, and sneezes.

Rhinoviruses are a specific type of virus that belong to a larger family called picornaviruses. What makes them special is that they break down easily in acidic environments.

This idea is about using a nose spray or breathing treatment with nitric oxide to hit the spot where COVID-19 germs first enter your body, which might help fight the infection better.

Nitric oxide helps relax blood vessels and affects blood clotting, which might change how blood flows and clots in people with COVID-19.

Nitric oxide might help fight the COVID-19 virus by stopping it from getting into your nose and throat cells and making copies of itself.

Salt might help fight viruses like coronaviruses in lab tests, and this could be why people feel better when they use salt-based treatments.

Using saltwater nose rinses and gargling might help adults with common colds caused by coronaviruses get rid of a hoarse voice almost 3 days faster, according to a small study.

Using saltwater nose rinses and gargling might help adults with common colds from coronaviruses feel less stuffy faster, cutting down how long their nose stays blocked by about 3 days, according to a...

Using saltwater nose rinses and gargling might help adults with common colds from coronaviruses get over their cough about 3 days faster, based on a small study.

Using saltwater nose rinses and gargling might help adults with common colds caused by certain coronaviruses feel better about 2.6 days faster, according to a small study.

Some zinc lozenges can help you get over a cold faster if they're made the right way, but store-bought ones with extra ingredients might not work as well.

After three days, honey probably doesn't help coughs or sleep any better than cough medicine or a fake treatment, according to research.

Honey might help kids and their parents sleep better when they have a cough, compared to doing nothing. Studies show it makes a small but noticeable difference in how much sleep is affected.

Giving honey to kids might cause more stomach problems than giving them a fake treatment, based on some research with about 400 children.

For kids with coughs, honey might work about the same as a common cough medicine called dextromethorphan, but we're not very sure because only a couple small studies have looked at it.

For kids with coughs, honey might work better than a common cough medicine called diphenhydramine at making them cough less often, but the evidence isn't very strong yet.

Giving honey to kids with a bad cough might help them feel better faster than a fake treatment, cutting about three-quarters of a day off how long the cough lasts.

Giving honey to kids with a cough for a few days helps them cough less than a fake treatment, according to good quality research.

A substance called NONS can kill many different types of viruses in lab tests, and it works by using nitric oxide to change the virus's proteins, which stops them from working.

NONS is a disinfectant that quickly kills over 99.97% of a tough cold virus in a lab test, while regular alcohol only killed about 37% of the virus.