Saturday Quack - Airborne

Airborne is a really successful cough-and-cold remedy. And it was “Created by a School Teacher!”, as the packaging loudly proclaims. Well, I suppose there are plenty of people who think that aschoolteacher could design a better drug than any pharmaceutical research company. But Airborne isn’t really so special. It has the following ingredients:

Seven Herbal Extracts

Antioxidants

Electrolytes

Amino Acids

Megadose of Vitamin C

Its compounded mixture of herbs, vitamins, and minerals are supposed to boost natural immunity. But we know that megadoses of vitamin C aswell as known hebal extracts are not capapble of reducing the risk of infection by the common cold virus. Frequent exposure to the full range of provides the best immunity from further infection – see how few colds older folk develop each year, compared with young parents.

I’ve nothing against taking vitamins and mineral supplements if one’s diet is poor, or there’s a diagnosed nutritional deficiency. But a good multivitamin will be far cheaper than compounded remedies like Airborne, and do just as much good. Spend the money saved on a good (healthy) meal.