Cold Season

I haven't walked into a class in the past few weeks that hasn't had at least a few sniffling students. It's the season for colds, and when I came home with a case of the sniffles, my mother suggested drinking some hot tea or having warm, steamy soup for dinner. These remedies are really common all over the world, but do they actually work?

There has been no large-scale clinical trial testing wether hot liquids actually help to relieve the symptoms of the common cold. However, I found an article on a small trial of 30 sick patients who got a drink of blackcurrant-and-apple-flavored fruit cordial, a popular local remedy in Wales. While the test subjects nasal air flow remained the same, most of them reported a decrease in common symptoms, such as fatigue, runny nose, cough, sneezing, etc.

There are many speculations as to why these hot fluids relieve the symptoms of a cold, some saying that the ingredients in blackcurrants and green tea might fight viruses, bacteria, and inflammation. I think that the best reason for this is simply the placebo effect. People with colds believe that hot liquids will cure their symptoms, and so they feel better.

Whether the effects of hot liquids on cold symptoms are only psychological, we simply do not know. But, we do know that colds can spread easily, so if you have a cold, make sure to wash your hands frequently and cough and sneeze away from others!

Groundhog Day

February 2nd was Groundhog Day, a day many of us just overlook and pass off as unimportant. Although I am guilty of committing such acts of uninterest towards Groundhog Day, I did a little research about the holiday and found out that it is a much bigger event in other parts of the country. The largest Groundhog Day celebration is in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, where crowds made up of as many as 40,000 people have gathered to celebrate the holiday since at least 1886. In fact, the holiday began as a Pennsylvania German custom in Pennsylvania in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Groundhog Day has its origins in ancient European weather lore, where a badger or bear is observed, as opposed to a groundhog. It also has similarities to the medieval Catholic holiday Candlemas and the Pagan festival Imbolc, which also involves predictions of the weather. While we may pass off the predictions of the groundhogs as unnecesary, due to the many various sources of weather prediction that are avaliable to us through the media, ancient cultures may have relied on the groundhog or other animals to accurately predict the weather for them.

The most famous modern groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, predicted that there would be six more weeks of winter this year. No surprise for Chicago weather! So, come February 2nd of the year 2010, make sure to appreciate the prediction for Groundhog Day as a look back into history when people didn't have the morning news weather report to predict the weather for them.