Get with a group. Having friends is fun, but it can also help you stave off the common cold, according to a study published in Scientific American Mind. When you spend time with good friends your immune system gets a boost, a good excuse to go out for a drink or spend a little time gabbing, no?

Wash your hands. Almost seems stupid to call this one out, but boatloads of researchers agree: Washing your hands is one of the best ways to prevent illness. Make it a habit to wash your hands as soon as you come home, and wash after shaking hands or before touching your eyes, nose, or mouth.

Eat your veggies. Lots of them. A summer 2009 study found that pregnant women who ate at least seven servings of fruits and vegetables daily seemed to moderately reduce their risk of catching an upper respiratory tract infection (better known as a cold).

Drink your milk. Milk is one of the best sources of vitamin D. A February 2009 study found that those people who were deficient in this vitamin were 40 percent more likely to report being recently sick. “People with the lowest blood vitamin D levels reported having significantly more recent colds or cases of the flu,” according to the study. While more work needs to be done to make a direct correlation between vitamin D and wellness, getting your recommended daily allowance of the stuff certainly can’t hurt, right? Here’s a good chart to see how much you need every day. (Scroll down a bit to Table 2.)

Do you have a cold? If so, drinking tea — but not too hot since it can increase the risk of throat cancer — can help you feel better. Tea — green tea in particular — contains antioxidants, seems to reduce the risk of diabetes, improves bone health, helps reduce the risk of periodontal disease, and just plain feels good.

Want to win a big basket of Celestial Seasonings teas? Please leave me a comment telling me what symptoms you usually get with a cold along with your name and email address. One reader will win the following:

• Four wellness teas to ease symptoms associated with the cold and flu – Sleepytime Extra, Echinacea Complete Care, Tummy Mint.
• Two green teas to support a healthy immune system year round – Authentic Green Tea and Honey Lemon Ginseng Green Tea
• A mug, soothing lip balm, honey sticks and Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Bear
• The book “Herbs for Health and Happiness” by Mo Siegel and Nancy Burke

This gift is coming to one of my readers courtesy of Celestial Seasonings — I am not being paid for this. It was just a cool offer so I thought I’d pass it along.

So…tell me about your worst cold. What was it like? How do you usually deal with a cold? How do you avoid them? FYI about the giveaway:
Contest ends at noon pacific time on 3/17/10. Winner will be determined by random.org. Winner will be notified by email and has 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be drawn.

Not a bad place to be hanging out with an ear infection.

Keira got a fever on Saturday. We never would have known aside from the fact that she felt like a hot water bottle when we picked her up. We took her temperature. 104.2 degrees. Wow. We called the doctor. Did she have any other symptoms, the doctor wanted to know. Coughing? Sneezing? Boogie nose? Nope. “Okay, well, just give her alternating doses of Motrin and Tylenol, and keep an eye on her. If she has a high fever without symptoms for more than 24 hours, she needs to be seen.” She could have a urinary infection, explained the doctor. By Saturday night, though, her fever was down. Sunday, she woke up with an almost normal temperature, so we went out to the beach to enjoy the beautiful Indian summer here on the Island. That night, however, her temperature was back up to 104. She fit the criteria in my book: 104 after 24 hours. I took her over to the after-hours doctor service my doctor suggests.

After doing an exam, that doctor said Keira’s ear was red. She had an ear infection, she said, and she was going to prescribe antibiotics. My doctors, I explained, always liked to wait a few days before giving antibiotics for an ear infection. In fact, Keira has never been on antibiotics. The doctor was firm, though, and wrote a prescription for amoxicillin. By that time her fever was down to 100. Taking everything into consideration — the lower fever, the lack of pain, the fact that she was playing peek-a-boo with the fish on the wall — I decided to wait to talk to my own doctor before filling the prescription. Monday morning rolled around. Keira’s fever was hovering around 100 without the benefit of Tylenol when I made the call. Going on that information, my doctor said I could wait until Wednesday to give the antibiotics. They would take another look at her ear, and make the determination then.

My doctors are not bad doctors for doing nothing. In fact, they are doing something pretty impressive. They are following a set of 2004 guidelines published by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians. The guidelines cover treatment for acute ear infections, asking doctors to use an antibiotic-free treatment plan for most kids, treating them with pain relievers and observation for the first 48 to 72 hours. If pain is moderate to severe, and if fever is high, treatment may be indicated. However, if the fever goes down — which it usually does — no treatment is necessary. (They do suggest antibiotic use for babies younger than six months, but even then they ask doctors to prescribe the most basic antibiotics.)

This wait-and-see approach is smart because more than 80 percent of ear infections clear up on their own. And there’s another benefit to avoiding antibiotics, according to a May 2009 Consumer Reports blog: Fewer ear infections in the future. “If children had taken antibiotics, there was a 63 percent chance they’d had at least one subsequent infection. The risk was only 43 percent for children who’d been given an inactive placebo,” according to the magazine.

The reason for this change in protocol is simple but scary: Over-prescription of antibiotics has created superbugs — nasty, antibiotic-resistant germs like MRSA that can cause big problems. Ear infections are the main cause, according to the University of Texas. “Ear infections are the driving force behind antibiotic resistance, a troubling medical issue, as physicians often administer antibiotics for the painful, persistent ailment.” I was actually surprised to read that one U.K study found kids under five are still prescribed antibiotics 2.2 times, on average, per year even as researchers and scientists call for less use of the drugs.

So we’re going back to the doctor tomorrow to get Keira’s ear checked out. She’s been fever-free since yesterday. She’s running around. She’s laughing. She’s eating and drinking. I think we made the right decision — with our doctor’s help.

Please note: I am not a doctor, and I don’t profess to be. I am a crunchy mom who believes in and supports Western medicine. I’m not saying to skip the doctor if your kid has a fever. Self-diagnosis is not smart or advisable. It can even be dangerous. (Trust me, I ask my doctor’s opinion before making medical decisions for me or my children. I think I called my pediatrician more during Keira’s first year than I did for Katelyn’s!) However, if you’re sitting in the doctor’s office being handed antibiotics, it’s not a bad thing to ask — if your doctor is prescribing them for a simple ear infection — what he or she thinks of the AAP’s ear infection guidelines. Sometimes, it’s as simple as saying, “What would happen if we waited to treat this?” Doctors want to be helpful. Parents want to help their kids. This can result in doctors doing something to appease parents. They may not want to give an antibiotic, but do so to make the parents — not the kids — feel better.

What has your doctor done for ear infections? Do you routinely get antibiotics? Do you insist on treatment because you hate to see your kids in pain? I’d love to hear about it. Want to learn more about avoiding ear infections? Check out this smart Consumer Reports story.

And yet, an avid researcher, I was already well aware of the benefits of nasal irrigation. People who use simple saline solution irrigation have found an effective treatment for chronic nasal symptoms, according to a study out of The University of Michigan Health System. Another even more impressive study published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association found that children who used saline nasal irrigation saw cold symptoms improve, but the kicker was that the kids who regularly treated with nasal irrigation “had significantly less severe sore throats, coughs, nasal obstructions and secretions than those in the standard treatment group. In addition, during the prevention phase, fewer children in the saline group were using fever-reducing drugs (9 percent vs. 33 percent), nasal decongestants (5 percent vs. 47 percent), mucus-dissolving medications (10 percent vs. 37 percent) or antibiotics (6 percent vs. 21 percent). During the same period, children using saline had fewer days of illness, missed school days or complications.”

Wow. So they got sick less. They took fewer antibiotics, and used less over-the-counter medication. Wow. So I did it. The next time I felt a cold coming on, I put my head over the sink, poked the ASJA gift bag neti pot into one of my nostrils, and let it flow. I was sort of surprised at how good it felt. I was also surprised that my cold didn’t progress the way it usually would have. It was mild. I was hooked. Aside from the fact that my husband thought it was the funniest thing — me bent over the sink with water running out of my nose — and laughed about it, I was a happy woman.

Fast forward to last winter, when my husband got a terrible cold. He was dying, he said. He couldn’t sleep, he said. He was miserable, so I offered him the neti. He was in such agony that he actually decided to give it a go. He instantly fell in love with the way it flushed all the nasty mucus out of his sinuses. He was a neti convert. And there you have it. I assumed it was a one-time deal, washed my pot, and forgot about it.

This week, however, he got another head cold. A nasty one. He took possession of my neti again, except this time he told me to go buy my own. My own. Can you imagine? I stopped on my way home from the train station. Anyone have a Sharpie? I’m marking this one.