Airborne Cold Remedy: Don’t Bother
12 Comments Published by Joel February 20th, 2007 in Drugs, Fitness, Travel. Share This
The last couple of years has seen Airborne Effervescent Health Formula ascendant among “savvy” travelers. Heck, even I have bought at least one tube of the fizzing tablets packed with large percentages of one’s daily dosages of several vitamins, along with some herbs like echinacea, amino acids, and sodium—but mostly fizzing calcium carbonate. I didn’t know if it would help me avoid taking home a biological souvenir from the Aluminum Tube O’ Disease, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.
“It couldn’t hurt,” is the motivation behind almost all vitamin ingestion, though, despite there being a lot we still don’t know about the absorption of vitamins. (My guess is that the article I just linked to bolster my argument, having been written in 1963, may not contain the sum total of modern medicine’s grasp on the mechanism of vitamin absorption. Which is to say I don’t intend on bolstering every statement I make with accompanying links, because I’m just a stupid writer, not a doctor. But even a cursory Googlin’ will give you some recent examples of studies showing vitamins taken in pill form may not be all that useful at all.)
Anyway! The problem with Airborne—ignoring the possible but unlikely possibility of vitamin A poisoning—is that it is really expensive. A pack of 10 tablets has an MSRP of $8, while a name-brand tub of 250 multi-vitamins can be had from the same place for $17.
You won’t get the herbs or the fizzing with a multi-vitamin, but you’ll get quite a bit more variety for a lot less money: about 7 cents per dose of multivitamin versus about 80 cents per dose with the Airborne. For 63 cents you could wash it down each multivitamin with a can of Diet Coke.
I don’t think Airborne is especially nefarious—although plenty of people do, including Scientific American columnists—but instead just a bunch of vitamins wrapped up in a smart, folksy advertising campaign. So if you’re about to fly and haven’t been taking your multivitamin, I won’t get mad at you for buying some Airborne. Just don’t get mad at me if you still get sick.
Oh, you know what? I almost forgot my whole reason for looking into Airborne in the first place. Does anybody know how to mix up calcium carbonate to make effervescing tablets at home? (For DIY Airborne, bath bombs, etc.)
Berocca is pretty much the same thing as Airborne, without the ‘folksy’ advertising and big headline that it was invented by a schoolteacher (how is that supposed to make me feel?) and my GP recommended it to me for situations like when my roommate had a cold to help stave off contracting it. I don’t think Berocca is sold in the US though, but it is available down here and it’s cheaper than Airborne.
What’s more expensive than Airborne but I can personally vouch for that it works (whether it’s psychosomatic or not is not part of this discussion) is Cold-FX. Don Cherry shills for the stuff in Canada and I tried it out last year and it worked for shortening the lifespan of cold symptoms. After that I stocked up next time I was in Canada.
Cold-FX is available in the US now and since I’ve been fighting off this super-bug that just.wont.go.the.fuck.away for nearly three months now, I picked up another 60 caplet bottle at Walgreen’s in Ft Lauderdale this weekend. $30 for 60 caplets is expensive, but I know it works (at least for me) so I’m willing to shell out for it. It’s mostly panax ginseng, but whatever it is, it works.
As for the DIY, I seem to remember seeing a link a few months back on lifehacker or hackaday or something like that. They may have been linking to make or something, I don’t remember, but you shuold be able to find it through our big friendly friend who’s name starts with G, ends with E and has an OOGL in the middle.
Calcium carbonate won’t fizz in water – not pure water, anyway. You need something a little more acidic; even vinegar will do.
You might be able to buy it in a drugstore, or go hack off a hunk of clean, white limestone for free – there should be plenty of it in the roadcuts of New York state, or find a park with big decorative rocks.
I guess I’m saying that it’s not about “mixing up calcium carbonate” to make it fizz… it’s about adding acid. It’s why limestone statues in cities get kind of melty faces – it’s acid rain. Of course, if ordinary water made calcium carbonate effervesce, we wouldn’t have anything made of limestone, now, would we?
Having said that, powdering it, thereby dramatically increasing the surface area/volume ratio, will make it fizz in acid *better*.
I am going to have to support mark and his theory on the COLD-FX stuff. I got my hands on a few sample bottles and the stuff works wonders. I never took it daily, but at the first sign of a cold, I took their advice for a 3 day cycle and both times this happened I thwarted getting sick. I know its expensive, but I think it works and in the future after my free supply runs out, I would def pay for it.
Airborne actually makes you ill. I don’t know a single person who has taken airborne, flown and failed to get a cold right after.
I think it’s all a bunch of quakery, meself.
Nice to know. Another cold remedy product to be weary of is Zicam. It is “clinically proven to get you over your cold 3x faster” and it works. I started using Zicam two years ago and for a short period I thought I found the miracle remedy. If I had a symptom I would reach for Zicam and all was good. Then I lost my sense of smell for almost two months. Could not smell a thing – ammonia, garlic, wet dog…nothing. I am a chef and I rely on my sense of smell when I cook. It really screwed me up. After 7 weeks my sense of smell gradually came back, but it was enough of a scare for me to never touch Zicam again.
Generally before a cold hits, when I feel weakend or exposed to a cold, I”ll use Yin Chiao (a chinese herb to for colds – aka wind condition). It tends to keep them at bay. If the cold actually takes effect I add airborne, chicken soup and rest to help my recovery. You cannot get better quickly without rest and liquid protien (chicken soup). It’s hard to be scientic with so many variables as to the best solution.
Sorry yo, I’m gonna have to disagree. I work with wee ones, very low functioning ones at that. More often than not they are little mobile petrie dishes who just can’t wait to spread their dirty dirty ways.
I have, needless to say, tried almost every holistic/vitamin/folksy/chinese-herbalist-wow-that tastes-like-crap remedy. I actually think Airborne works a lot better than others, and does keep me from getting sick. Is it the best thing out there? Beats me. Will it eventually kill me? Perhaps. Will I keep taking it whilst I bathe in Purell? Hell to the yes.
I recently used Zicam also and have lost my sense of smell. Did you do anything to get your smell back?
Add me to the list of Zicam victims, does your sense of smell and taste come back and how long does it take.
I also recently used Zicam, felt a burning sensation while using it and have very little sense of smell after using it. My cold long gone but no sense of smell for three weeks now. It is very scary and frustrating. The only way I can smell something is if I put my nose very close to it. From the reports I have read along with the Washington Post article it is said it is permanent lost of smell. To hear it was temporary for someone gives me a sparkle of hope.
the problem is that they had false advertising. it doesn’t prevent colds that well but helps the body’s immune system to shorten the length of the cold. I’ve taken it and so has my brother. The cold only lasted two days.it varies from person to person.All it is is vitamins and herbs to boost the immune system.