Things to do while you have a cold

I’ve had a cold for the last couple of weeks that has settled into being sinusitis; or maybe it was always sinusitis masquerading as a cold. Whichever. During this time, I’ve been reading the ingredient boxes of the various cold/sinus medications. We had quite a collection in my house since The Geek will buy a different one if his original purchase didn’t work as well as he wanted. We had daytime and nighttime selections, for colds, colds with coughing, and sinus/allergy problems, all different brand names. As everyone knows, it may be over-the-counter but it ain’t cheap. Well, except for Wal-Marts house brand which is less expensive than the others.

To cut to the chase on this, every one of them had the same chemical names in them with the same mg’s per chemical EXCEPT for the antihistamine. A-HA! I thought the difference between daytime and nighttime formulas is that the antihistamine makes you sleepy. That’s not the only thing I thought. I also thought there will be no more buying of twenty different brands to find one that works – they all have the same thing. You only have to worry about buying something different if you need cough suppression (which is another chemical that was the same across the boxes.)

During the course of my cold/sinusitis, I proceeded to empty all of those boxes. Today I was reading the boxes left for me to empty when I noticed something else I had missed on my earlier perusal of the ingredients. A certain brands daytime sinusitis ingredients were EXACTLY the same as a different brands nighttime cold formula! This explains why yesterday the daytime formula kept knocking me out. The moral of this post: the next time you are sick read those ingredient lists and don’t buy five different brands looking for a cure. Moreover, don’t believe that daytime/nighttime stuff on the box. If it has an antihistamine, it will make you sleepy.