Here’s some health news for those of you who seem to suffer every time the flu goes around: vitamin c, Echinacea, and zinc lozenges are the three best alternative therapies out there when it comes to beating the flu and the common cold. This latest bit of health advice comes courtesy of researchers at the Seekers Centre for Integrative Medicine in Ontario, Canada.

To see how well various alternative therapies have been holding up when it comes to preventing the flu and the common cold, the Canadian researchers scanned MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. They searched from January 1966 to September 2009, combining the key words/phrases “common cold” or “influenza” with the words “Echinacea,” “garlic,” “ginseng,” “probiotics,” “vitamin C,” and zinc. Clinical trials and prospective studies were included.

Not surprisingly, they found that vitamin C demonstrated the largest benefit for prevention when it came to fighting the flu and colds. Continue reading →