My beautiful neti sitting in my bathroom.

Little Girl came home on Monday with her first preschool cold. No sniffles, just a cough. She’s actually really good about covering her mouth with her elbow, but she’s also only three. Sometimes she coughs on Mommy.

Yesterday I started getting that tell-tale burning in my sinuses as well as a pain behind my left eye that always leads to a cold. I do not have time for a cold. I have dinner out tonight with friends and a play with the girls tomorrow and a six-page white paper to write. I do not have time to be sick. I went into preventative action.

My first order of business: Using my neti pot. Don’t know what a neti is? Check out this post — one of the first I ever wrote — about the proven scientific benefits of using a neti pot, which is essentially a little teapot that you use to pour water through one nostril so it can come out the other. Since I first wrote that post, there’s been more research data to support the use of neti pots including this one proving its effectiveness for children from the University of Kansas School of Medicine and this one from the University of Padova in Padova, Italy. The Italian study actually that found that using a neti eliminated the bacteria staphylococcus aureus (better known as staph) in study subjects’ noses. Okay, so I used it and, I will not lie, because I wasn’t feeling good it was not a pleasant wash. It burned.

I also made sure I ate lots of cold-fighting foods yesterday. I had two bowls of soup, which has been found to have cold-fighting properties. I went with a tomato-based chili for lunch. (Tomatoes are high in vitamin C.) I had chicken soup for dinner. I also loaded up on garlic, adding two cloves to the chili I made.

This morning I feel better. It’s amazing, really. Was it the neti? Was it the food? Was it a combination of the two? I’m not sure, but I’m hoping that it sticks. Just to be on the safe side I am going to neti again this morning. It can’t hurt, right?

What’s your favorite cold-fighting cure? Have you ever used a neti pot? Even more important: Do you have a good chili recipe? Mine came out blech but I ate it because I couldn’t stand the thought of throwing out all that expensive organic chicken and beans. By the way, this post is how I am participating in this week’s Real Food Wednesday and Fight Back Friday, two awesome blog carnivals dedicated to promoting the use and consumption of — what else? — real food.

Okay, so I will back up. Thursday night when we got back from Disney we were sitting in the den when we heard it. Meow. MEOW. We quickly realized that there was a cat trapped under our crawlspace. We had no idea how it got there, but it was there. Hubby went outside and opened the door to the crawl space for a bit, hoping the cat would leave. He couldn’t leave the door open for too long because it is COLD here in New York, and he didn’t want our pipes to freeze. Once he closed it up, we didn’t hear anything, so we assumed it left.

Fast forward to last night: I went out with my first Four — the three girls who were my best-est friends when Big Girl was just a baby. We’ve been doing something for our birthdays since the kids were little, and last night we celebrated mine. I got home around 10 p.m. My husband was trying to get a Linux server to recognize some sort of application. (Don’t ask. There are always technology projects going on at our house.) He was in grunting and scowling mode, so I fell asleep on the couch. I woke up around 1 and went upstairs. Mr. Tech came up soon after. My husband falls asleep the moment he hits the pillow. I should have, too, but I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned. I tried all sorts of positions. Finally, at around 2:30, I got up to go to the bathroom. Once I was done I turned on the water to wash my hands. Nothing happened. WTF??

I walked into our bedroom and woke my husband. “The pipes seem to be frozen,” I told him. Was the insulated door to the crawlspace open? Yes, he said. He heard meowing during his tech session, so had opened it at around 8 p.m. to try and coax the cat out. He forgot to shut it, though.

Being the super-smartie that he is, he went around the house and turned on all the other hot water taps. Soon after the water in our bathroom started flowing. The heat of the other pipes warmed up the frozen ones, thank goodness. After that my poor husband went outside in zero degree weather and closed the door to the crawlspace.

Once the door was closed, and the water was moving freely I immediately fell asleep. As I was drifting off I realized that something — call it intuition, call it a feeling — had been keeping me up. After all, if I didn’t suffer from a bout of insomnia we probably would have had a very expensive, very messy morning. Frozen pipes are no joke, and we are lucky that it was caught in time. The pipes had probably just frozen when I went to wash my hands.

Anyway, stuff like this has been happening to me more often. And I’ve been listening to myself more often, too. Going with that little tingle, that little voice in my head is really paying off. (Although it hasn’t told me how to get that freaking cat out of our crawlspace!)

Do you believe in intuition? Do you think it’s real? Have you ever benefited from listening to your inner voice? I’d like to know.

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.

Little Girl 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 Little Girl’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, Little Girl 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. Little Girl’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 Little Girl’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 Little Girl’s first year than I did for Big Girl’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.