After a fall season that lasted approximately ten days, winter barged into Northeast Ohio along with the dreaded common cold. That’s the achoo cold, not the brrr cold.

Many precautions can be taken to prevent colds from beginning or worsening. Danielle Brown, a senior, offered her advice: “I drink a lot of orange juice because it is full of vitamin C and potassium.”

Medicinenet.com provides the obvious tips like “Wash your hands often” and “Avoid touching your face.” WebMD discusses how stress, tiredness, and even sadness can often lead to the immune system slowing down. This is most likely the reason why students get colds or other illnesses so often.

Senior Kathryn Coughlin takes preventing colds seriously. “I drink a lot of water and do my best to get a good amount of sleep every night,” she said.

Mrs. Colleen Kozlowski, the school nurse, had tips to share about preventing a cold and also gave advice for when to stay home and not come to school. Her first tips were to “Wash your hands every time you touch something, drink tons of water, sneeze into your arm. And hand sanitizer is very helpful in preventing the spread of germs.”

When asked at what point students should stay home from school, Mrs. Kozlowski said, “If you are coughing so much that you are disturbing a class, if you have a fever over 100, or if you feel achy and have the chills, that is probably a good sign that you should stay home.”

Jonathan Satina, a freshman, would agree. He said, “I stay away from people to try to prevent spreading germs.”

If these tips fail and you end up getting sick, you could follow the time-honored remedy of junior Dillon Coughlin (no relation to Kathryn) who said, “Eating chicken soup helps make me feel better.”