For the last 17 years of my practice, I’ve seen that, ten days after kids get back in school, the first wave of colds and flu viruses come alive. The good news is that you don’t have to be at the mercy of these pathogens and you don’t have to just ride it out. There are many preventative measures and also treatments available if those nasty little bugs do get under your skin.

For prevention, you should wash your hands with soap and water liberally and often. When you sneeze, sneeze into your elbow. And be sure to support your immune system.

Acupuncture and herbs are both effective for immune support. Acupuncture can both help ward off a pathogen and also reduce the length of a cold’s effects by facilitating your body’s own energy flow. There are also many helpful herbs in the market. A few of my favorites include Emergen-C, Dr. Dave’s Mushroom Tonic and Immucare by Natura.

Eat well, avoiding processed foods and, instead, consuming whole, local, minimally processed foods. Drop the sugar. If sugar is listed as one of the top three to five ingredients on a packaged food label, find something else. Refined sugar reduces the immune response in your salivary glands by 50% for three hours after consumption according to a report published by the New England Journal of Medicine, 1993. When you shop, stay out of the center aisles of your grocery store and focus instead on the perimeter where the healthiest foods such as fresh produce, unprocessed meats and dairy products tend to be placed. The middle aisles typically host the unhealthy processed, junk and sugary foods.

Pay attention to your body. It is your own personal source of wisdom and will tell you immediately, wordlessly reliably when you are out of balance. The sooner you learn to recognize your body’s signals, the sooner and more easily you can move forward into health. For example, you may find that, after being out all weekend in the fall wind at your child’s multiple soccer matches, you wake Monday morning with a stiff neck. You know you didn’t injure yourself, nor do you have any other more serious neck maladies so you attribute it to “sleeping wrong.” But there might just be something else going on. This may be your body’s way of telling you that you’re fighting a pathogen or a cold. 　In Traditional Chinese Medicine, this is called a Wind Invasion. At this stage, if you feel a chill and you are not sweating, you may want to take a hot bath and drink a cup of steaming ginger tea. Stay in the bath and drink the tea until you produce a sweat. 　In doing this, you encourage your body to expel the wind pathogen, thereby preventing its ability to settle into your body. 　There are also Chinese formulas that can be prescribed by your acupuncturist if this treatment was not enough. 　In paying attention, you can observe imbalances early and be able to mitigate the time and intensity of the pathogen.