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The story
A post asking “Is there really a way to avoid catching colds?” drew a flood of personal experiences on 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” board. Alongside standard measures like hand-washing, gargling, wearing masks, and managing humidity with a humidifier, posters shared their own tricks: drinking cheap vitamin C (ascorbic acid) every day, using saline solution for nasal rinses, and wearing a neck warmer to bed. Some said they stopped catching colds after picking up the gargling habit during the pandemic, while others leaned into sheer willpower, insisting “it’s all luck in the end” or “I just refuse to lose.” The thread split between those who swore by scientific measures and those who swore by mindset.
What people said
It's brutal
Living a normal life is exactly how you catch one
So that stuff actually works, huh
Being able to rinse out the whole mucous membrane where the virus collects is huge
Doesn't it hurt your nose?
Also air out the room
Now that I think about it, I never caught a cold during the COVID years
Indoors, just keep things properly managed with a thermo-hygrometer
Humans are delicate — even getting a little too warm and sweating can give you a cold
My head's not working right
This stuffy nose is killing me
Take a bath and raise your body temperature
Keep your vitamin C levels saturated and you won't catch a cold even if you tried
First time hearing of ascorbic acid
I'll look it up
Since I rebounded (gained the weight back) I haven't caught a single one
It's something people have said forever, but it really does matter
Doing it half-heartedly doesn't do anything
Go look up the proper technique
Plus vitamin C supplements — I've only caught one cold in the past decade or so
Keep the AC/heater running year-round
Don't sleep with the window open just because it's cool at night — and the same goes the other way around
It's just luck
Don't just exclude those, lol
Steam type seems best but my room's too small for one
Zojirushi humidifiers are easy to maintain, they're good
Ones with lots of parts or complicated designs are a pain to clean, better to avoid those
Just buy proper saline solution
Also, if you're class of 2027 you'd be a 4th-year, right? Having too much free time around then throws off your daily rhythm and makes you more prone to colds
I've got national exams right after New Year's so I'm pretty swamped
Thesis is due next month too
That exhaustion is exactly the reason
That's not it
Ever since I started university my cold frequency has clearly gone up, and it's been bothering me
This year I hadn't had one since January, so it's actually on the low side
Did you start smoking or something? After I started university, quit baseball, and took up smoking, I got more prone to colds — though it got better once I started weight training
Vitamin C absolutely works for cold prevention
If you only take vitamin C it just gets flushed out
Vitamins need to be balanced or they don't do much
That's why multivitamins are the best value
Even when I feel one coming on, I'm fine when I wake up in the morning
I'm also the throat type
Gonna order a neck warmer on Amazon
Sheer willpower actually gets you pretty far
Because mentality and immunity are basically the same thing
Then please stop coming into the office when you're sick
Background and key points of this discussion
Medically speaking, there’s no single foolproof method for preventing colds — combining basic measures like hand-washing, gargling, ventilation, and humidity control is generally what’s recommended. The thread’s favorite, taking large doses of vitamin C, lacks strong large-scale research showing it prevents colds, and the point raised in the thread (reply 76) — that since it’s water-soluble, any excess just gets excreted — is actually the more nutritionally sound take. Likewise, while some people find nasal rinsing painful (reply 33), the point that diluting it to roughly saline-solution strength minimizes irritation (reply 44) is a practical detail that’s easy to overlook. The relationship between immunity and mindset isn’t fully settled even among experts, so the thread’s “willpower” theory should be read as personal anecdote rather than established fact.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “Is there really a way to avoid catching colds?“
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