Your throat feels scratchy — what matters now
You know the moment: something is on its way. What you do over the next day or two won't shorten the cold as much as people claim — but it does decide how easily your body gets through it.
A cold is a viral infection of the upper airways, and your immune system handles it on its own — usually within one to two weeks, with the cough hanging around longest (IQWiG, gesundheitsinformation.de — common cold). Nothing on the shelf meaningfully shortens that. What you can change is the conditions your body works under: enough sleep, enough fluid, less training load.
One point deserves more weight than it usually gets: sleep is not the soft factor here. In a study where volunteers were deliberately exposed to a cold virus, people sleeping under five hours a night were roughly four and a half times more likely to actually come down with a cold than people sleeping more than seven (Prather AA et al., Sleep 2015;38(9):1353–9).
What you can do right now
- Go to bed early tonight, and sleep in tomorrow if you can. Best return on effort by a wide margin. Everything else on this page is an add-on.
- Drink steadily through the day. Water, unsweetened tea, warm broth. Warm liquid soothes a sore throat and keeps your airways from drying out — it makes the whole thing more bearable, even though it won't cut the infection short.
- Scale training down rather than dropping it. A rule of thumb from my studio: while it all sits above the neck — a blocked nose, a bit of scratchiness — easy walking or very light training is fine. Once you get a fever, body aches, a chesty cough or that flattened feeling, stop until you feel clear again. That is practical experience, not a proven threshold — when in doubt, rest.
- Eat warm and easy to digest. A broth or soup gives you fluid, salt and a little protein in a form that still works when your appetite has gone.
- For a cough, a spoonful of honey. Honey is one of the few home remedies with real evidence behind it for cough (IQWiG, gesundheitsinformation.de — common cold). Not for children under one year.
What can wait a couple of days
- The hard session. It moves back two or three days, and you get back to your level faster than if you push through now.
- The short night. The evening you lose to 'just one more thing' costs you most now, of all weeks.
- Reaching for vitamin C expecting it to stop the cold. Taken regularly, vitamin C shortens a cold in adults by about eight percent on average; started after symptoms appear, the trials showed no consistent effect (Hemilä H, Chalker E, Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2013, CD000980). You normally get enough from food.
- Alcohol. It degrades sleep quality on exactly the night you need it.
Meals that fit
Warm, full of fluid, and manageable when you barely feel like eating.
If you want to go deeper
See a doctor if you have a high fever, severe or worsening symptoms, chest pain, or shortness of breath or trouble breathing — particularly if you have a chronic respiratory condition (IQWiG, gesundheitsinformation.de — common cold). The same goes if you improve and then clearly get worse again, or if symptoms drag past two weeks.
If you are pregnant, live with a chronic condition or take medication regularly, ask sooner rather than later.
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Get the free lessonThis page is general information drawn from 19 years of coaching practice. It is not medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If something worries you, see a doctor.