It is 3:00 a.m., and you groggily wake up, realizing that your throat aches, your head feels stuffy, and you have some nasal discharge-the all-to-familiar symptoms of an on-coming cold. What’s worse, you have an important business proposal to present in the morning, and there is no way you can miss work. What do you do now? Either head to your medicine cabinet or your 24-hour drugstore for some Zicam Cold Remedy nasal swabs or spray. In my experience Zicam is one of the few natural/homeopathic remedies that really works to help a cold.
What is Zicam? It is zinc based cold remedy that has been proven in scientific studies to block the cold at its source. Apparently, the cold virus breeds in your nose, so using the zinc swabs or spray stops the cold virus in its tracks. In studies, people who used these products got over their colds 3X faster than those who did not. Also their symptoms were less severe. But, studies aside, I have been using this product for two years now, and it always helps my cold. Sometimes if I use it soon enough (as soon as I feel a cold coming on), I don’t even get the cold. Other times, my cold is over in 1-3 days; my colds used to last at least a week. With Zicam, even if you come down with the cold, there is usually only one bad day at the most.
Zicam Cold Remedy comes in both the nasal swabs/spray and oral mist/lozenges. I personally only recommend the nasal swabs or spray, as I cannot tolerate the taste of the lozenges or oral mist, and they do not even seem to work as well as the nasal products. Zicam also offers cough, flu, congestion, allergy, and sinus products; however I have only tried the cold remedy so far. They also offer the nasal swabs in a smaller size for little children, and I have tested these on my son. He does not really like using the nasal swabs, but they work every time.
The cost of Zicam Cold Remedy varies depending on where you purchase it. You can find it at most drugstores, but I have found Walmart to be the least expensive, where it is around $8-9 for a box of the nasal swabs or a bottle of the nasal spray. I believe it is the least expensive to buy the nasal spray and use Q-tips to make your own nasal swabs. This is easy to do. Just spray a little pump of the nasal spray on the Q-tip and use the same way as you would use the nasal swabs.
I have not found Zicam Cold Remedy to be irritating to my nose at all. You are only supposed to use it once every four hours. If you search the internet, you will find that some people are suing Zicam, saying it caused them to lose their sense of smell. My personal opinion is that they are just money-hungry lawyers/individuals, because I have used Zicam a lot and never had a problem with my sense of smell. However, if this is something that concerns you, the oral products are always an option.
In conclusion, the next time you feel those irritating cold symptoms beginning, what would it hurt to give Zicam a try? It is homeopathic and contains fewer harmful drugs than most over-the-counter cold products. But most importantly, Zicam nasal cold remedy really works!
