Wpg Free Press: Throat spray proven effective for fighting cold, flu

As the Winnipeg Free Press reports: 

Cold and flu sufferers, take heart.

A Winnipeg company has developed an all-natural throat spray that has been clinically proven to be safe and effective in helping fight cold-and-flu-related bacteria.

Innotech Nutrition’s Colflex throat spray, which is made from a blend of essential spice oils — oregano, thyme, spearmint and lemon — has been available for about four years in health food stores, select pharmacies and natural health-care clinics across Canada….

But doctors often said they’d want assurances that particular combination of essential oils is safe to use on a daily basis before recommending it to patients.

So Innotech asked the University of Manitoba’s Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals to test the spray for both its safety and its effectiveness in inhibiting the growth of the bacteria often associated with colds and flu….

“In the lab, we found this product halted the incubation of staph, strep, e-coli and salmonella bacteria in less than 30 minutes,” Dr. Peter Jones, [director of the Richardson Centre] said. “Moreover, our double-blind, randomized clinical trial showed Colflex had no effect on the glucose levels (blood sugar), lipids (cholesterol), or liver enzymes of people who took the supplement over a period of four weeks.”