Believe It or Not, You Should Be Taking Oscillococcinum

There is no compelling scientific evidence that Oscillococcinum has any effect beyond a placebo, but please hear me out because it’s worked for me for over thirty years.

I hate having a cold. There’s just something about coughing and sneezing and blowing my nose that feels so bad that I’d rather break my hand or spend a night in jail. Okay, to be honest, I’ve never been in jail, but I have broken my hand, and it hurts like hell, and I’d prefer either of them to a cold. To me a cold is not just a little annoyance, it sometimes makes me cry.

So when a pharmacist friend told me in the late 80s that there was a homeopathic medication called Oscillococcinum that works better than any cold remedy, I agreed to try it.

At first, I used it as prescribed: Reduces duration and severity of flu symptoms. Dissolve entire contents of one tube in the mouth every 6 hours up to 3 times a day. Temporarily relieves flu-like symptoms such as body aches, headache, fever, chills, fatigue.

I should add that the old boxes stated that it was important to take it immediately upon noticing any symptoms. The new boxes do not. Anyway, one day I woke up with swollen glands and followed directions. About an hour later, I began sneezing and was congested. I had no doubt about it — this was the beginning of a nasty cold. I took it again as prescribed, six hours after the first dose, and then again six hours later.

By the time I went to bed that night, I had no symptoms. They came early in the morning and were gone by bedtime. Several months later, I began to notice cold symptoms while I was away from home and wasn’t prepared to take Oscillococcinum until later that evening. I discovered that it was too late. Even though I took it three times a day for two days, I was in the midst of a full-blown cold. Since taking Oscillococcinum for the first time, I have only come down with a cold when I have run out of it or when I have failed to take it immediately upon recognizing symptoms such as sneezing, sore throat or swollen glands. Not only that, but I discovered my own method for preventing colds through the use of Oscillo.

When my daughters were small and my husband worked in a large firm, they would constantly be sick. I asked my husband to please use good hand washing techniques to lower his risk of contracting a cold, but that never worked too well, as a good amount of his workday was spent shaking hands with clients. And as for the girls, it’s difficult to avoid illness when attending school and other activities.

I devised a way to remain symptom free.

Again, the Oscillococcinum instructions and uses were clear. “Take at the first sign of cold or flu.” But I did better than that. Whenever anyone in my house was ill, I would take one tube of Oscillo. That means that for each day someone close to me had symptoms, I would continue taking one tube. Not only that, but if I stepped into a pharmacy, I took it. If I went to a doctor’s appointment, I took it. If I noticed someone sitting next to me was sniffling, I took it. Once when everyone in my family was sick, one after the other, I took it for three weeks straight.

I know some people will think I’m crazy, and others will believe I have stock in the company. But I have no investment in this other than I believe it to be the reason I have remained so healthy through the years, and I want to pass this unconventional phenomenon on to you. I can’t say what it will do for you, I can only tell you what is has done for me. If you want to experiment for yourself, I would love to hear about your experience in feedback.