Who knows where the hot toddy remedy came from or why it's so popular, but it seems to work quite well. The alcohol just might have something to do with it.

The recipe involves hot water, jigger of rum, a teaspoon of sugar, and some lemon juice. Actually the sugar would normally hurt your immune system, but may make you feel better for an hour or so. You can replace this with some raw honey.

Garlic

This is an ingredient that you should throw in with chicken soup (a scientifically proven remedy) when you have a cold. Hot spices like chili peppers and curry can also loosen the mucus.

Garlic has great healing powers. American doctors prescribed garlic for colds coughs in the 1800s (before pharmaceutical dollars influenced the industry) and more recently, scientists have found that garlic has antibacterial and antifungal properties. As far as viruses, it's unknown.

Anyway, it may make you stink, but some have found it to ward off the cold symptoms within a day. Plus the smell will keep people away so they don't catch the cold :)

Asafetida (Hing)

There was a time when you could walk into just about any small school in America during cold season and smell this aroma. Many kids were sent to school with a little bag tied around their necks with it. The bag was filled with this stinky herb. It's even worse than garlic.

The idea was that this bag of asafetida would ward off cold. Maybe it just kept kids far enough from each other that they couldn't catch each others germs.

Ginger

This herd is magical. There haven't been a lot of studies but Chinese healers have used it for colds for thousands of years. Researchers found that ginger has chemicals in it that fight off cold viruses. It also increases blood flow and can give energy.