Does Airborne really work to shorten or prevent colds?
Michael Shermer recently wrote about Airborne in his column “Skeptic” in Scientific American (link). In it he says: Harriet Hall, a retired U.S. Air Force flight surgeon and family physician who studies alternative medicine […] looked up Airborne’s ingredients in the Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database and found no evidence that any of the ingredients prevents colds. Worse, vitamin A is unsafe in doses greater than 10,000 units a day, and Airborne contains 5,000 units per tablet and recommends five pills a day or more. The only positive finding was for vitamin C, for which some evidence indicates that taking high doses may shorten the duration of cold symptoms by one to one and a half days in some patients. But the large amounts needed may cause side effects.He also references
