Hi everyone this is Monica Reinagle the nutrition diva here with your quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous

This week we're talking about colds and whether there's any truth to the claim that zinc might help lessen the misery.

Last week I woke up one morning with a funny feeling in my nose and a little tickle in my throat and I immediately panicked.

Of course, it might be nothing. We just turned the heat on for the season, so maybe I was just feeling the drier air.

And I'd spend a lot of time raking leaves the day before. Maybe it was a mild allergic reaction to all the leaf dust in the air. Or it could be the first signs of an impending cold.

And with a series of holiday concerts coming up this month, I absolutely cannot afford to get sick.

So I went into emergency mode, a mode that every singer out there will recognize.

I got at the Nettie Pot and the facial steamer, made chicken soup, ginger tea and started gargling with

salt water. I also went to the drugstore to pick up some Vitamin C and Echinacea.

Yes, I know the evidence that these supplements prevent colds is kind of weak, but I was

feeling desperate. In other words, this evidenced-based nutritionist was more than willing

to spend $15 on a good old-fashioned placebo response.

And while I was at the drugstore, I also bought some zinc lozenges which claimed to be clinically

proven to reduce the duration and the severity of colds, especially when taken at the very first sign of symptoms.

Okay, make that $20 for a good old-fashioned placebo response.

I'm happy to say that I did not get sick. And of course I'll never know whether all my emergency

interventions made any difference or whether it was really just a false alarm. Frankly, I don't care. If faced with the same set of circumstances, I would probably do it all over again.

Long live the placebo response.

But it did make me curious about these zinc lozenges and how they might work. We catch colds

when viruses attach themselves to the mucous membranes in our nose and throat. Cold viruses are attracted to a specific receptor on the

surface of those cells and once attached they set up shop and start replicating.

Zinc lozenges are thought to work by releasing electrically charged ionic zinc, which has an affinity for that same receptor.

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