Cause of common colds may be in the mind

Press, 3 August 1976, Page 14

Cause of common colds may be in the mind

London

One of my neighbours swears by a brew of wild peppermint tea, but my family is convinced that nothing beats a hot lemon drink, laced with brandy and sweetened with honey to ease a common cold. Our speciality might pack much more punch, but I’m still not convinced that either concoction is particularly effective against the ailment which they are both claimed to cure. For though colds have been one of man’s most miserable ailments since time immemorial and though hundreds of thousands of pounds have been spent on research during the past 25 years, it seems that we are no nearer finding a real cure than we ever were.

That, at least, is the opinion of experts at the Common Cold Research Centre, at Salisbury, in Wiltshire.

One 'of the doctors there told me recently that they are no nearer finding a cure-all for the common cold than they ever were. “Colds are virus diseases,” he explained, “rather like smallpox, chickenpox and mumps. The difference is that a cold can be caused by any one of up to 100 different types of virus. “Unfortunately,” he added, “the chances of ever incorporating in one vaccine all the antigens necessary to protect against every Jcnown cold virus are pretty astronomical.” DEFENCE LINE Our best line of defence, I was told, is to aim at lessening the symptoms, rather than trying to cure the cold. Traditionally, the doctor reminded me, colds are “three days in coming and take three days to depart,” though they can drag miserably on for longer unless we take steps to attend to them. Headache remedies, I was assured, help to reduce the feverish symptoms and there are several proprietary pro-

ducts which shrink the nasal membranes to prevent stuffy noses — and that is a step in the right direction.

But a cold is at its most dangerous — and most antisocial stage — when the sneezing begins. You can then save everybody else a lot of discomfort just by spending a day or two in bed until this stage has passed. Though there are not any really effective cold cures about, few scientists sniff at the many reasons why we catch colds in the first place. RESISTANCE Most doctors agree that the healthier you are the better your resistance to infection, including colds. The Economist Intelligence Unit has reported that during this coming Winter about 35M cold sufferers, in Britain alone, will lose the national economy about 40M working days. And that is an alarming statistic.

One of the reasons that colds are more prevalent than they have ever been is because more of us travel in crowded public transport, fewer of us take sufficient exercise and most of us eat reheated, pre-cooked meals that are lacking in the vitamins esseneial to good health. A New York psychotherapist, Dr Meryl Jaokel, has long been in hot pursuit of the causes of the common cold and he firmly believes that most are “the result of psycho-physi-ological changes which accompany depression.” Depression, of course, is known to lower resistance to colds and Dr Jackel’s theory is that we think outselves into colds, that those stinging eyes and stuffy noses are nothing more than “symbolically Represented tears.”

A medical researcher, Lucy Freeman, is one of the first to agree with that after her six years of reserach along similar lines. Miss Freeman appears to take Dr Jackel’s theories a step further. After interviewing dozens of doctors and psychologists, she found that the majority agreed on one thing: that most people can think themselves out of colds. “LACK OF LOVE” • One of the biggest colddealers of all time, is lack of love, she believes. So the next time you catch a cold, she said, it could be because your sex-life is not all that it should be. “In fact,” Miss .freeman said recently, “you cpuld say that a cuddle a day helps keep the cold away. “Lack of love or affection is frequently the cause Of colds and I’ve found that many people who have nobody to care for them often seem to suffer from all the symptoms of chronic colds. “Children are a good case in point,” she added. “They know that all it needs is a streaming cold to gain extra affection from their mothers — and sometimes they even think themselves into a. cold for that very reason.”

Both weeping and the common cold make our eyes puffy and cause our noses to become tender and swollen, which lowers resistance to cold viruses.

“In fact,” Miss Freeman added, r ‘once I realised that the common cold was basically a psychosomatic condition I stopped suffering from them.”

One of her surveys involved a company which employed about 50 women workers in one department, half of whom led normal lives, the remainder were known to have domestic problems and other difficulties.

Most of the first group, Miss Freeman reported, rarely suffered from colds, but the second group were almost chronic sniffers and sneezers.

Michael Phillips, a medical correspondent of Features International, London, discusses a theory that “a cuddle a day keeps colds away.”