The hard cold facts

The common cold comes complete with its own prescribed mythology: starve a cold, feed a fever. Drown a cold with whisky, purge it with garlic. While your panacea may be another's poison, neither is likely to be based on science.

So what are the hard, cold facts?
You may think you're forever plagued with a case of the snuffles, but health experts tell us the young suffer most.

Children and young adults can expect about six colds a year. Once you're over 30, your body has assembled a collection of immune responses that keep the number of colds down. When we reach older age the frequency increases again.

While a cold can seem interminable, symptoms usually last up to ten days. If symptoms outlast this time, you may have an allergy and should contact your Pegasus GP.