Well, you don't know if you have a cold or the swine flu. And even if you have a cold, you shouldn't be exposing other people. What? you say. Swine flu? Yeah. Tons of people have had without knowing. They thought they had an awful cold, or were run down or had a mild flu. Never knew, never will. What you should do when you are sick is: * Stay home until you feel better. Don’t return to work or school until you have been well for at least 24 hours. If you are running a fever, wait until at least 24 hours after your temperature has returned to normal. * Avoid going to the hospital if you have mild flu-like symptoms such as fever and cough – even if you think you could have H1N1 flu. People with flu usually recover without medical treatment, but other illnesses can cause a fever, so call your doctor if you are in doubt. You should rest, drink plenty of liquids and take the same over-the-counter medicines that you would normally use to treat flu. * Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when sneezing, coughing or blowing your nose. Clean your hands afterwards, using soap and warm water or an alcohol-based hand sanitizer. But, you probably won't. So, what you can do to feel better during the day when you maybe exposing people to lots of your germs is take over-the-counter medicines. Now, I don't know your health, or if you have any conditions, so, I'm just going to tell you what you can do, and what does what. If you have a condition of any sort, talk to a doctor, and always read the labels on your medicines and make sure you're being careful. DECONGESTANTS relieve nasal congestion. They do this by causing the blood vessels in the nasal membranes to narrow. They ome in pill and nasal spray form--you might know the brand names sudafed for example. Decongestants are also found in many of your over the counter combo meds--headache, runny nose, I'll take care of it all things. More on this later. Warning about decongestants, they have a tendency, to in some people, keep them AWAKE. That's why you find night and day decongestants. Sometimes that's because it's a slightly different medicine that's less likely to make you drowsy. The night ones aren't supposed to keep you up. But a lot of the time, the way they expect to accomplish this is by combining the decongestant with an antihistamine--which makes most people drowsy. ANTIHISTAMINES are used in cough and cold remedies often with a decongestant, but more often they are used to treat symptoms of allergic reactions, such as the sneezing and runny nose of hay fever and the itching, swelling, and redness of hives and other allergic rashes. Antihistamines may make you drowsy. There are non-drowsy formulas, formulas where the chemical compound is too large to penetrate the blood-brain barrier. But sometimes, they're also just paired with decongestants, hoping that the drowsy and awake effect will balance. But not everyone is effected the same and they don't always balance. EXPECTORANT (generally seen as the chemical agent Guaifenesin) is any agent which dissolves thick mucus and is usually used to help relieve respiratory difficulties. Expectorants are usually paired with cough suppressants. That way dry coughing, that's useless and just wares your lungs out is stopped. When you do cough, you're actually getting something out of your lungs, and it's productive. COUGH SUPPRESSANTS - suppress cough Advice against combo meds. Don't. It's stupid and it's dangerous. If you have a headache, take ibuprofen or whatever you take for your headache. If you have a cough, take a cough suppressant for that. If you have a runny nose, take a decongestant, and maybe an antihistamine. The problem with combo meds is the following--your headache medicine lasts 6 hours, your cough suppressant lasts 4, and isn't time released, your decongestant lasts 8, your antihistamine lasts 8. The medicine will have instructions, how much to take how often, but some things will wear off before others. You'll be getting more of meds you don't need and not enough of what you do, and you can't supplement it with anything because you don't know enough. And when you combine meds, you don't know how they effect each other, how time releases work or don't--it's stupid and unnecessary. It's less helpful when you are sick and it's risky. From your symptoms, I'd suggest a decongestant, 12 or 24 hours. If you're really sneezing, take an antihistamine too, but a non-drowsy one. If your nose is really runny, try a nasal decongestant like Afrin--you can only use it when you really need it, because you can't use it that often or for that long, it's powerful, but it'll dry you up so you can be in an office. There are some, some combos that are ok. Like antihistamine-decongestant combos where the meds are timed to each other. There are several of these, Claritin-D, etc. Also, I do approve of the Mucinex brand combos. They time both medicines out so that you get both for the same amount of time. But that's powerful--only take it if you really, really, need it. But do everyone a favour. If you can, just stay home.