Someone once told me that the best way to cure a cold was to slice open an onion before bedtime, and then put one half (open side facing up) on a nightstand. The onion would absorb the nasty viruses in the air, and the patient would be miraculously cured.

I’ve always been curious about these kinds of home remedies for viruses like the common cold. Some folk medicines have some value, after all, even if they get the theory wrong.

So, in a story for Men’s Fitness, I asked two experts: Dr. Pritish Tosh, M.D., an infectious disease specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and Donald Ford, M.D., a family medicine specialist at the Cleveland Clinic. We discussed 13 home remedies for colds that actually work, so our sick readers could get back to bicep curls and back squats in no time.

(Oh, and the onion thing? Total bull. But onions do have some astringent effects, which can help unclog stuffy sinuses.)