What to do if you have a cold and a headache?

Written by Hu Bai Yu
Pulmonology
Updated on February 12, 2025
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If you have a headache with a cold, it might be due to a viral infection, and you should go to the hospital for a routine blood test to identify the source of the infection. Then, take the corresponding anti-infection medication to treat and alleviate the symptoms. Also, you should pay attention to eating light, drinking more water, promoting excretion, and enhancing your immune system. Avoid eating spicy, greasy, and cold irritating foods. If the headache is severe, you may need to take some painkillers to relieve the symptoms. Additionally, symptomatic treatment should be applied; apart from the headache, you should check if there is any fever. Once the temperature exceeds 38.5°C, you should take some antipyretic drugs for treatment. Also, pay attention to using physical cooling methods, drinking more water, and avoiding spicy, greasy, and cold irritating foods. It is advised to follow the doctor’s guidance closely and cooperate actively with the doctor to alleviate the symptoms.

Other Voices

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Is a wind-heat cold contagious?

In traditional Chinese medicine, a cold caused by wind-heat is seen as resulting from the combination of wind and heat pathogens. The symptoms include fever with relatively high heat signs, slight aversion to wind, not much sweating, headache, facial redness, coughing, sticky or yellow phlegm, thick yellow nasal discharge, dry throat or red and swollen throat, and other symptoms such as swollen and painful throat, nasal congestion, and dry mouth. The wind-heat type of cold in Chinese medicine generally corresponds to what is considered the common cold and influenza in Western medicine, both of which are recognized as viral infections. Therefore, the wind-heat cold is contagious, and patients should maintain a certain distance from others.

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Can you smoke when you have a cold?

You should not smoke when you have a cold. As colds are a type of respiratory infection, smoking can directly irritate the respiratory system, including the mouth, throat, and nasal mucosa, worsening the condition and triggering coughing and sore throat. This is detrimental to both recovery from the illness and overall health, therefore, smoking should be avoided during a cold. During a cold, it is also advisable to eat a light diet, avoid meat, and consume more fresh vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, drink plenty of water, and avoid staying up late. Generally, recovery will gradually occur within three to seven days. If there is a secondary bacterial infection, antimicrobial medication may also be necessary for treatment.

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Written by Wang Chun Mei
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Is it good to sweat when you have a stomach flu?

Gastrointestinal cold is a very common type of cold. In addition to various degrees of upper respiratory tract symptoms, patients also experience gastrointestinal symptoms, particularly common ones such as decreased appetite, abdominal bloating, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting. Some patients may also have varying degrees of fever. For such patients, if they have both fever and severe diarrhea, they are prone to sweating because the body needs time to cool down to normal temperature after a fever, which often results in sweating. Moreover, patients may experience sweating due to severe dehydration. If these factors are present, the situation is generally not good, so it is important to provide timely symptomatic treatment based on the symptoms exhibited by the patient.

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How to recover quickly from a cold?

If you have symptoms of a cold, make sure to observe what symptoms are present, such as fever, cough, sputum production, limb soreness, and fatigue. If the symptoms are mild, it is likely just a common cold, which should heal in about seven days. Besides avoiding interventions, it is also important to rest more, drink plenty of water, and promote excretion. At the same time, appropriate outdoor activities and physical exercise can enhance physical fitness and help the disease recover more quickly. Additionally, if the symptoms are severe, besides treating the cause, it is also necessary to take some symptomatic medications to alleviate the symptoms. Also, complementing this with daily life routines and some dietary adjustments can help the disease recover more quickly.

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Dietary Therapy Methods for Colds During Pregnancy

Pregnancy is a particularly special period in the physiological process of women. During this period, due to pregnancy, women's immunity decreases. Additionally, due to the baby, the mother's nutrition is deprived, leading to malnutrition in pregnant women. Pregnant women during this period are very susceptible to colds or other infectious diseases. Due to the special circumstances, medications cannot be used, so treatments are limited to dietary remedies or traditional Chinese medicine. We can use remedies like brown sugar ginger tea or Fritillaria pear with rock sugar to treat symptoms of the common cold, which often have very good effects.