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The right way to treat a cold

What do your parents give you when you catch a cold? The odds are that whatever it is, it has a large amount of vitamin C in it, which, according to a new study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, does absolutely nothing to cure colds!

The common cold is called common for a reason- adults get about two or three a year, children get about six, and the elderly get about one. It causes children to miss school and adults have to take days off to stay home with them or recover themselves.

If a child gets sick, a parent will usually take a day off to stay home with them. All of these sick days can add up, affecting children's education if they miss too many days and costing an adult's company a lot of money.

The most popular way of treating the common cold has been to eat and drink food or vitamins high in vitamin C, such as orange juice, strawberries, and broccoli. Some people buy over-the-counter medication to relieve their symptoms. Some even flush their noses with a special mucous-dissolving solution, eat garlic, take spoonfuls of certain oils, make special teas or try other unusual solutions.

According to the study, all of those treatments have little to no effect on killing colds. Vitamin C may be helpful for sick people who are, for example, running a marathon or live in a cold Arctic climate; but 29 trials with more than 11,300 people proved that it gave "no meaningful benefit in the average patient."

Antibiotics also proved to do more harm than good in treating common colds because most are caused by a virus, which can't be treated with antibiotics. While antibiotics can be life-saving they can also become dangerous if taken too often because our bodies build up a resistance to them, so they should never be taken for a small cold.

Zinc proved to make colds disappear about 1.5 days sooner in adults, but did almost nothing for kids who took it once they were already sick.

However, if taken year-round, zinc may help reduce the number of colds children catch per year, but more research is needed to prove that.

Honey proved to be the most effective way to help children and adults with a cough sleep better at night. Just a spoonful before bed helped children and their parents sleep better. The simple way to prevent catching or spreading colds is the old fashioned hand washing and using hand sanitizer!

Internet

"Goldfish Memory", a fact

Having the memory of a goldfish may not actually be a bad thing, according to a three-day study that proved fish can remember events from 12 days before.

Scientists tested the memory of African Cichlids, a freshwater fish, to see if they could train them to return to a place where they had found food nearly two weeks earlier.

Over three days they taught them to enter a specific zone of their aquarium to be fed. After 12 days the fish were reintroduced into that same tank to see if they could remember to go to the same area to be fed.

Lo and behold, they did, proving that their memory lasts much longer than a couple of seconds. Scientists believe this is because they associate locations with their preferred source of food.

"Fish that remember where food is located have an evolutionary advantage over those that do not. If they are able to remember that a certain area contains food without the threat of a predator, they will be able to go back to that area.

Internet

Meet the squirrel with the world's bushiest tail

This squirrel is the owner of the world's fluffiest tail, but you should think twice before cuddling it. Rheithrosciurus macrotis, also known as the "vampire squirrel," lives on the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. It is twice the size of average squirrels at 14 inches long, and has rarely seen in person.

Its tail is 130 per cent the size of its body. To compare, the giant ant eater's tail is 80 per cent of its body size, making it a close second for the title.

The vampire squirrel earned its nickname from local legends that say the squirrel will sit on low branches and jump on to a deer, bite its neck and kill it and eat it as a tasty meal. However, this has never been witnessed and there is no documented proof.

"(The legend) sounds pretty fantastical," said Roland Kays, a zoologist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh. "Even more than its fluffy tail!"

The vampire squirrel also has particularly furry ears that stick up! It's not known why the squirrel needs such a bushy tail, but Erik and Rona as well as their 15-year-old Emily Mae Meijard believe it may be to confuse predators and prevent them from getting a good grasp on the squirrel.

- Internet