Beiruting News

there's a good chance you might be looking for anything and everything to rid yourself of an annoying, lingering and sometimes debilitating cold.

You may want to add yogurt to your list of cold-fighting remedies."When it comes to yogurt specifically, I'd say there's not a lot of research that we can point to that indicates yogurt reduces symptoms of a cold," said Mickey Rubin, vice president of nutrition research for the National Dairy Council. That being said, "There are some things (in yogurt) we can point to that, in theory, would be beneficial."Studies that have looked at probiotics have found promising results in terms of reducing the duration and incidence of colds. However, specific benefits can only be attributed to the actual strains studied -- which do not necessarily exist in regular, non-supplemented yogurt,  For example, conventional yogurt contains Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus -- two cultures that are integral to the yogurt making process, and as such are known as "starter cultures." While these are beneficial bacteria, they are not necessarily the same probiotics that have been studied in clinical trials yogurt is a nutritious food choice and we know probiotics are beneficial to health, so including them in an overall healthy eating plan makes sense, but recommending them specifically for the common cold would be premature