As faithful readers of my blog will no doubt have already learned, I think that being a grandparent is the best and most rewarding job ever created. It may also be the most hazardous.

All of you who have them already know that grandkids share more than their hugs and kisses and joy with you when you visit them or vice versa; they also unwittingly share their snot on their precious little hands and faces, potentially containing every virus they’ve encountered recently at school. Since the arrival of our three exceptionally wonderful grandchildren, Mike and I have experienced that peril first hand: every cold the grandkids get, they share. When we’re with them, especially this time of year, I begin to feel like Lady Macbeth, washing, washing, washing my hands and muttering about ‘all the Purell in Arabi.’

Back when we ran our general medical clinic (at the beginning of our careers in medicine for ten years or so) we developed the iron-clad immunity that most doctors do from exposure day after day to a large and varied, germ-bearing, patient population. Since leaving day-to-day practice six years ago and with our children long grown and gone, we haven’t had that chronic every day exposure to infection and consequently our immunity has waned a bit, leaving us much more susceptible to viruses we haven’t encountered in a good long while.

To wit: over Thanksgiving, while visiting in Dallas, we got one grandson’s cold; over Christmas we got the other grandson’s cold. This past week, our granddaughter, who was visiting us, came down with a cold and that sent us running for the supplement cabinet.

Our routine over the past ten or so years, when we felt we’d either been exposed to someone with a cold, flu or other contagion or felt like we were coming down with something of that nature, has been to begin a supplement regimen designed to provide our immune systems with the raw materials necessary to step up to the plate and knock out the invader. The regimen is not a cure; it’s simply good nutritional support to help our own natural immunity.

The regimen includes, among other things, extra vitamin C, extra zinc, some lactoferrin and/or lactalbumin to sequester iron and keep it away from the invading hordes, and various other immune supportive nutrients, such as colostrum (a source of immune globulins found in the first milk produced by mammals) and olive leaf and 1,3 beta-glucan (which are potent natural antimicrobial agents). It’s got a lot of vitamin C and a whopping slug of zinc in it, which has been clinically shown to reduce the duration of a cold, but which if taken in this amount chronically could cause deficiencies of other important minerals, such as copper. So we don’t take it every day, but at the first sign of potential trouble, we take the combo 2 or 3 times a day for 5 days or so.

Just a glance at that list and you immediately realize one thing: you have to dole out capsules from about a half dozen different bottles, which is a pain in the neck at home and nigh onto impossible on the road.

But a few months back, when we began reformulating our Drs. Eades’ Daily Regimen vitamin/mineral supplement, we got a bright idea.

Why not ask the manufacturer to put all these disparate immune support supplements into the same kind of cello-pak we had used for the Regimen for the sake of economy and convenience?

And so we did.

The product, called Cold Pack, is the second in our line of Drs. Eades’ Signature Nutrients and it’s now available on our website…and just in time for our grandkids’ next visit!

One Comment

  1. My question would be, what is the shelf life on this product. I haven’t had a cold or flu since I started low carb 4 years ago, however I do like to be prepared.

    COMMENT from MD EADES: I will have to ask the manufacturer to be certain, but I would think a year or two if kept at a reasonable temperature and dry. We hadn’t had colds in years, either, until the advent of the grandkids.

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