Fights colds and vampires!

Colds suck. They keep you from windsurfing. They wake you up in the middle of the night with a splitting headache when the cold medicine wears off.

Fortunately, I don't get colds very often anymore. I always thought sailing through the winter was the reason. All those 200 different kinds of cold viruses were actually afraid of the cold. Or so I thought. But I was wrong.

Three days later, Nina finally remembers that she brought some cold medicine from Germany. It's plant based. But I believe in chemistry! Unfortunately, all the medicine you can take for sinus pressure says "stop after 3 days". I'm approaching 3 days. That sucks! I also know from experience that you should indeed stop after 3 days. If you don't, your body just gets used to the medicine. First, the medicine does not really help anymore; but when you stop taking it, your body misses it, and you're miserable again.

What Nina brought was the #1 selling cold medicine in Germany. The stuff has been sold for 80 years. If it did not work, I think the Germans would have figured it out. We are sometimes slow, but not that slow. Anyway, Nina said it worked really well for her. That's good enough for me. You can also take it for a couple of weeks. Considering that a cold usually takes 1-2 weeks and not just 3 days, that seems much more reasonable.

So I took it this morning. I started feeling better an hour or so later. Promising. I took another pill at lunch (you're supposed to take 3 a day). In the afternoon, I was able to stop taking pain killers. I also was able to work the whole day. Compared to just lying around and feeling bad, work is wonderful!

It's been 8 hours since my last pill, and I feel my stuffiness approaching again. I'll hold off a little while before I take my third pill, so that I can sleep through the night. But I think this stuff is absolutely fantastic. It's just a freeze-dried extract from 5 different plants. The company web site has a lot of information about it. Scientists are slowly starting to understand why it works. I won't bother you with the details; but one of the things I liked is that it the active compounds activate chloride channels, which in effect thins mucus, letting it drain instead of clogging your sinuses and creating pressure headaches. I also really like that the company controls the entire production, from seeds to extract. I like chemistry, but do I trust quality control in Chinese manufacturing plants? Hmmm.

You can probably tell that I was already sold. But then, after reading the German web site for a while, I read the English version, and discovered that the name of one of the five plants used in English is: vervain! Now that is absolutely fantastic! Anyone who ever watches TV knows that vervain is what you need to keep vampires at bay. Vampires don't like the taste of your blood if it has vervain in it, and they cannot compel you. I'm not really that afraid of vampires sucking my blood. But compelling could be a different story! After a recent blog post about where my jibes are less-than-perfect, two Long Island windsurfers ganged up on me, posting comments that my mistakes were in the entry. Maybe they are just trying to help - but can we be certain that they are not vampires, trying to compel me to work on the wrong part of my jibe? How could we be certain?

Well, I have taken my first vervain pills, and I can see straight through their attempts! Another couple of months, and I'll see them at the East Coast Windsurfing Festival in Long Island. They'd certainly benefit if I screw up my jibes there. So what if Pete usually competes in a different class? So what if the Peconic Puffin has kept me from falling the first time I competed there? We can never be paranoid enough! They could be windsurfing vampires (with daylight rings, I guess)!

I realize that I may have lost a tiny bit of credibility with my little blurb about vampires. Your loss! I openly admit I'm not certain about the vampire bit, and that even if vampires exist, the idea about compelling me through the internet seems a bit far-fetched. But next time you have a bad cold and approach the 3-day maximum on your cold medicines, remember this post!

I guess I should tell you what exactly I am talking about. The good stuff is called Sinupret, and manufactured by Bionorica. In Germany, they sell "Sinupret extract", which is 4 x concentrated. In the US, the only thing I found was "BIONORICA Adult Strength Sinupret", which I guess is the less concentrated version. I'll order it soon to find out.

Hope to see you all on the water soon, vampires or not!