Effective Cold and Flu Treatments: Expert Recommendations

Grant Harding debunks ineffective cold and flu medications while recommending affordable, effective treatments.

### Effective Cold and Flu Treatments: Expert Insights and Recommendations
* 💊 Grant Harding, a licensed pharmacist and drug pricing expert, shares essential insights on treating cold and flu symptoms effectively while cautioning against **ineffective products**.
* 🤒 He emphasizes the importance of understanding the difference between viral infections like the flu and the common cold, stating that both have **similar symptoms** but require **different approaches for treatment**.
* 🚫 Harding warns against the use of antibiotics for viral infections, as they **do not aid recovery and contribute to antibiotic resistance**, stressing that many over-the-counter medications, such as DayQuil and NyQuil, are **ineffective and overpriced**.
* 💡 Instead, he recommends using liquid acetaminophen for fever and aches, highlighting the **affordability of Dollar Tree's acetaminophen at $1.25 for 118 milliliters**.
* 🌿 Zinc is suggested as a beneficial supplement, as it can **reduce the duration of illness** if taken within **48 hours of symptom onset**, potentially **shortening sick days by one or two days**.
* 💊 For prescription options, Harding mentions Tamiflu, which also **reduces sick days** but requires **prompt administration within 24 to 48 hours** of symptoms appearing.
* 🤧 He stresses the importance of **treating symptoms effectively**, recommending products like **diphenhydramine for runny noses** and **pseudoephedrine for congestion**, while also cautioning against **ineffective alternatives**.
* 💰 Ultimately, Harding encourages consumers to **prioritize effective treatments and save money** by avoiding overpriced and ineffective cold and flu medications.

I have in this bag the best medication to treat the cold and flu. Maybe your loved one is feeling rough right now. Maybe they have a virus and their nose is runny and they just feel all over horrible. Well, what's the best thing that you can help to treat yourself or someone else? There is a lot of products out there and not all of them are really that effective. In fact, most of them are junk, so it can be a very difficult experience trying to select the right product. I'm Grant Harding. I'm a licensed pharmacist in three states, a drug pricing expert, and although what I'm about to tell you here today is the exact same way I would treat myself or a loved one. Health-related information on YouTube does not apply to everyone and isn't medical advice. If you have a medical concern, make sure to get in touch with a healthcare provider. If you think you may have a medical emergency, get in touch with your doctor or local emergency number. That being said, I'm an expert in what I'm talking

about here today, and I feel very, very confident in everything I'm about to educate you on. So, the first thing we have to understand is what a virus is. Viruses are actually very, very different from bacterial infections, for example. Viruses have very sloppy metabolism, and they're very primitive. By strict definition, they technically aren't living, and I know that's very difficult to understand, but the point here I'm trying to make is this actually isn't very easy. Even though, for the most part, a common cold isn't going to cause serious issues, the flu definitely can, and treating it is not an easy task. So, a lot of people don't understand the difference between the flu and the common cold, and the reason for that is because the difference really isn't that important. So, the flu is a disease caused by the influenza virus. The common cold is kind of a colloquial term that people use to describe a condition caused by quite a few different viruses, but most commonly rhinovirus. So, what's the

difference. It's really tough to say. I mean, their genetic code is going to be different, but the symptoms are very, very similar. And, uh, uh, you really won't even know which one you have unless you do like extreme lab testing. So then, whenever you're feeling sick, do we really care about the difference? Not really. But before I teach you how to treat this condition, I want to tell you about the products to avoid because there is a lot of them. The number one thing is you cannot use antibiotics. A lot of people get upset if they go see a doctor when they're feeling, uh, sick, and they don't prescribe them anything. That's your best interest and society's best interest, by the way. If you take an antibiotic whenever you have a viral infection, not only are you not going to get better, you put our entire society at risk for developing resistance to those medications. Now, beyond that, there's quite a few over-the-counter medications that are absolute junk. Number one on my list is DayQuil and NyQuil. These are

garbanzo beans absolutely nothingness. These have medications in them to help treat symptoms, but not the actual virus itself. If you look at the back of the bottle here, look at the package here that contains things like acetaminophen, doxylamine, dextrorphan, and those are all wonderful drugs in and of their own right, but you needing this very specific combination is very unlikely. And to make things even worse, this is really expensive. These are like $20 a bottle or something like that. I'll show you a better way to treat these symptoms later. Next on the list is Theraflu, and I know this is so confusing because it literally has the word flu in the name, but it's the same thing. Look at the back. All it has is just, it's literally just Tylenol and a couple other things that they cram into one liquid. Now, on the off chance you actually do have symptoms that match all of these, I mean, you're welcome to try it, but I'd still rather you don't even buy

it because more than likely somewhere down the line you're going to have one or two of these symptoms and need the individual product itself and not this weird combination another medication. I tell people to never buy is guanosine. The brand name for this is Mucinex, and it is absolute junk. Studies have shown that it's not effective at all. It's supposed to help with cough, and it just doesn't. It's just junk. Another one is eonia, or however you say that. Um, I don't know. It doesn't do anything. But the granddaddy junkster, junkiest of them all, is this right here. I don't even know how to pronounce this. As a pharmacist, it is my duty to never know how to pronounce this. I call this OS soyum because it sounds like I'm saying it's oh so silly, and it is. This is complete and total junk. It does absolutely nothing. And what's very interesting about this is that quote-unquote active ingredient, which is not active at all, is incredibly dilute.

there's something in here that doesn't help, and there's not very much of it to prove to everyone how junky this is. I'm actually going to take this this year whenever I get sick, so that will be an upcoming video later. Now that we've thoroughly discussed all the junk out there, so what are things that actually help a lot of people like vitamin C, and what I can tell you about that is Vitamin C supplementation actually does help reduce the length of sick days if it's taken, you know, for a long period of time like a daily vitamin C supplement. But it doesn't help reduce the risk of getting sick, and once you are sick, it's not going to help you get better any quicker if you start taking it when you're sick. So I'll leave that up to you if you want to try that. For me personally, I don't use vitamin C whenever dealing with the flu or a cold. One of the things that helps a lot is just treating the symptoms rather

than the disease, but you can also treat the disease, as I'll talk about later. The most common symptom people have is fever and aches, and this is where liquid acetaminophen comes in. You can also use the tablets if you want, but a lot of people prefer the liquid when they're sick. It's kind of difficult to swallow sometimes, right, whenever you're feeling crummy. So, this is what I recommend. This is acetaminophen from the Dollar Tree. Now, I recommend this because this is the cheapest liquid acetaminophen you will ever find. Mind, and I actually looked at a wholesale distributor for it, and they don't even have a price this cheap. For $1.25, you get 118 milliliters or 4 fluid ounces, and you will never find a better price anywhere else. Dollar Tree acetaminophen is the best for treating fever and aches. A lot of people ask me about ibuprofen. Ibuprofen is fine as well. You can get 200 mg tablets at

the Dollar Tree. This was $1.25 for 30 tablets. I think this is a great deal. The ibuprofen is, in my opinion, a little bit better for pain related to inflammation. And if you're sick, that's not really inflammation, but it still definitely helps. It does reduce fever, and it does help with the aches as well. You can really use either product, but I typically recommend acetaminophen first. Now, if you have a runny nose, which definitely happens whenever people are feeling like they have a cold, the best thing to use for that is an antihistamine, such as diphenhydramine from the Dollar Tree. This was $1.25 for 36 tablets. And they also have a liquid version as well. Either one is perfectly fine as long as it's being dosed correctly. Diphenhydramine is a first-generation antihistamine, and it really works. If you ever taken it, like your nose feels very, very dry when you take diphenhydramine. A lot of people want

to know about the other anti-histamines. I typically don't recommend those, um, not for, uh, something like a cold. I mean, you can if you want to, but in my personal and professional opinion, D and hydramine, being first generation and short-acting, appears to have more of a powerful punch, which is what you want in this situation. People be getting nauseous whenever they're sick. I like this. This is actually a Coca-Cola syrup or a cola syrup, rather, um. It's just a very concentrated sugary liquid that you can get, uh, any sort of nausea relief at any pharmacy. I got this at Walgreens. But whichever one you want to use, and it just helps soothe and coat the stomach with a soothing, relaxing feeling. I also forgot to mention that, um, Dien hydramine actually helps with nausea as well. It's mostly, uh, nausea due to vertigo, but, um, I mean, I wouldn't. I would expect some relief from that if I was feeling nauseous from an illness as well.

The best thing for a cough when you're feeling sick: pure dextromethorphan. Dollar Tree is the only place I have ever seen pure dextromethorphan non-extended release. I have never seen this before in my life, so this is what I recommend: get 15 soft gels for $1.25. That is a great deal. This is one of my favorite finds in Dollar Tree, actually. The thing with dextromethorphan is it's not really that effective, but it's better than nothing, so this is typically what I recommend. I don't have any of this here right now with me, but for a sore throat, I always get a sore throat, and it bugs the heck out of me. There's two products I really like: there's a chloraseptic spray or its generic equivalent, which is phenol. You want to get the highest percentage you can find. It would probably be around 1.4%. Whatever the pharmacy has in the highest percentage, that's what you want.

They also make preparations, I think, with menthol in it. I love menthol as well. Get the highest percentage of menthol you get. We also have lozenges with phenol, menthol, benzocaine. I'm a big fan of benzocaine. Get all three, honestly, if you can find something that has all three in it with the highest possible percentage. This will really help your sore throat because if you're like me, I mean, that just really makes you miserable. Now, if you have a clogged nose instead of a runny nose, the best thing really is pseudoephedrine, but you have to ask the pharmacy for that. They track how much you buy, which really shouldn't be an issue, but keep in mind PSE Sudafed and its generic equivalent are different from PSE Sudafed PE. PSE Sudafed PE is phenylephrine. Phenylephrine is garbanzo beans. It's junk. Nobody likes it. Pseudoephedrine is pseudoephedrine. These are different chemicals. They're supposedly

similar, but like I said, Feno Efron just does nothing. We, as in the pharmacist community, do not stand fenine, okay? So, you're sick, you know what to avoid, and you know how to treat the symptoms. How the heck do you make yourself get better quicker? Well, it's right here. Believe it or not, zinc. Zinc has been shown to be effective in treating viruses. Now, before I get too far into this, there's also intranasal zinc, which I do not recommend, and neither do the sources I looked at to make this video. Apparently, intranasal zinc can cause irreversible lack of smell, which I thought was crazy. Zinc actually stops the virus from entering human cells, and there have been studies performed that prove that this is true, or at least we can feel confident making this recommendation. The studies that have been performed aren't the best, but they are good enough to make this something that I would recommend to myself or somebody that I loved. Lots of other very reputable sources agree with this recommendation. Now, the thing with

think is that you have to start it quickly within 48 hours. I saw one source that said within 72 hours. I'm going to say as quickly as possible the exact nanc that you start to feel sick. You should just have this on hand and you need to start taking it. So taking zinc, if you take it properly, will reduce the amount of sick days you have by about one or two days, which doesn't sound like a lot, but that's pretty par on course for a lot of our prescription medications, which I'll talk about in a moment. You obviously do not need a prescription for zinc. I want to make this point very, very clear. It doesn't matter what type of zinc you get. There's zinc gluconate and um I don't even know what the other types are. It doesn't matter as long as there's zinc in it. That is the important part because our studies aren't really the best. We don't really know what the dosing is and

I've seen anything from 10 to 24 mg every 1 to 4 hours for 3 to 7 days, which yes means you will be taking this very, very frequently, and uh, that's kind of annoying, but that's just the way it is. So, I was only able to find 30 mg tablets. Whenever I was buying this, I would just split these in half and take it probably every 2 hours while awake. There are also lots of zinc-containing products, which are great, but they're very, very expensive, and you can tell here some of the ones I'm showing, they have lots of other junk in there, things that you don't need. Now, our prescription medication for the flu and um, potentially the common cold, although its indication is for the flu, is called Tamiflu, and there's a couple other similar medications, and they only reduce the sick days by about 1 to 2 days, which is very similar to zinc. Now, the data we have for Tamiflu is much better, but

It actually doesn't keep people out of the hospital any less. It doesn't stop really severe complications of the flu. It just reduces the sick days, which is still better than nothing. But the reason why I bring that up is if you don't have insurance or you don't have access to a physician, I would recommend zinc in those situations. Now, if you do have a prescription for Tamiflu or something similar, it's very cheap. If you use my discount card, you can go to crushcost.com, and it's around $20, I think, for a five-day course, I believe is what it is. Now, I will mention this: most pharmacists hate Tamiflu because they put an expiration date on their product for one year, which means at the end of flu season, we send them all back to the distributor. And it's every year we have to buy it over again, and there's no reason for that. It's not like the flu shot where it's trying to predict the strains. The Tamiflu is the same thing every year.

they just very sneakily put that uh short expiration date on the package. Same thing with Tammy flu or any uh prescription similar medication. You have to start it very, very quickly within 24 to 48 hours. Because of this, I've never used it. It's too difficult for me to start getting sick, make an appointment to see a doctor, and have a pharmacy fill it. And I don't believe, at least I've never asked, I don't think Physicians would be too comfortable writing a prescription and just keeping it on file until you need it. I wish more Physicians would do that, actually. Um, but I' I've never been able to use that Med, so I don't have any personal experience with Tammy flu. That's all I have to say about that. I want you to feel better. I want you to save money. Visit me at Crush cost.com. [Music]

The BEST medications for the Flu and Common Cold 2024-2025

Grant Harting

Grant Harding, a licensed pharmacist, discusses the challenges of selecting effective cold and flu medications, emphasizing the difference between viral and bacterial infections.

He highlights the common cold and flu's similar symptoms and the importance of avoiding antibiotics for viral infections.

Harding also warns against ineffective over-the-counter medications like DayQuil and NyQuil.

Ineffective Medications for Cold and Flu Symptoms

Many over-the-counter medications, like those containing acetaminophen and doxylamine, are unlikely to provide the specific relief needed for cold and flu symptoms and can be expensive.

Theraflu and Mucinex are also ineffective, with studies showing no real benefit for cough relief.

Vitamin C supplementation may reduce the length of sick days if taken daily, but it won't prevent illness or speed up recovery once sick.

Affordable Remedies for Common Illness Symptoms

Liquid acetaminophen from the Dollar Tree is the cheapest option for treating fever and aches, priced at $1.

Ibuprofen is also available at the same store, offering 200mg tablets for $1.

25 for 30 tablets, and is effective for pain and reducing fever.

For a runny nose, diphenhydramine, a first-generation antihistamine, is offered at the Dollar Tree for $1.

25 for 36 tablets, and a cola syrup is recommended for nausea relief.

Effective Remedies for Cough and Sore Throat

Pure dextromethorphan soft gels from Dollar Tree are recommended for cough relief.

For a sore throat, the highest percentage chloraseptic spray, menthol, and lozenges with phenol, menthol, and benzocaine are suggested.

Pseudoephedrine is the best option for a clogged nose, and zinc is recommended for its effectiveness in treating viruses.

The Importance of Starting Zinc Quickly for Illness

Zinc should be taken as soon as you start feeling sick, ideally within 48 to 72 hours, to reduce sick days by 1 to 2 days.

The type of zinc doesn't matter; the key is to get zinc in any form.

Dosing can vary from 10 to 24 mg every 1 to 4 hours for 3 to 7 days, and splitting 30 mg tablets is a common approach.

Managing Flu Symptoms and Treatment Options

The flu vaccine reduces sick days but doesn't prevent hospitalizations or severe complications.

For those without insurance, zinc is recommended, while Tamiflu is a cheap prescription option.

The short expiration date on Tamiflu causes pharmacists to return it to the distributor, leading to annual repurchases.