1,001 THINGS Common Cold Research Centre, Cardiff.


• Sunshine. It boosts vitamin D, and immunity. A recent study found chest infections were 40 per cent more likely in those with low levels of vitamin D. • Bananas. They contain prebiotics, which feed probiotics, the good bacteria in the gut where 70 per cent of immune cells live. • A lie-in. Skimp on sleep and you lay yourself wide open to infection. A recent study found that sleeping for less than seven hours makes you three times more


• The scales. Obesity is a risk factor for swine flu, which hasn’t gone away—it’s one of the strains in this year’s flu jab. A quarter of people who died from swine flu in the US had a BMI of over 40 (the healthy range is 18.5 to 25). Use the calculator on nhs.uk/ tools to work out yours. • Your sex. Man-flu is a reality, say researchers at Cambridge, who found that men have lower immunity than women. (And don’t we know it.)


vulnerable to colds than snoozing for eight.


HOW TO …sell your house online HERE YOU ARE WITH A


PROPERTY WORTH


£225,000 (the average UK house price, according to the Land Registry of England and Wales) to shift—and the estate agent wants £3,375 (plus VAT) to sell it. Can you wriggle out of it? One in four of us considers selling our


own home before turning to estate agents, says the Office of Fair Trading. So why are we put off? “You need good antennae for time- wasters, tact


and patience,”


says Sebastian O’Kelly,


property editor of the Mail on Sunday. “And if you think estate agents have dubious morals, try dealing with ordinary people.”


If they come knocking, that is. Big property sites don’t accept private ads and the biggest of all, Rightmove, is scathing about sell-your- own-home sites. “Private- sale websites are only


popular with other sellers,” it says sniffily. “There’s not usually enough property to lure serious buyers.” A quick click shows it has a point. To avoid losing £500 on


an unread ad, post details of your property for free on sites like Sarah Beeny’s tepilo.com. If you’re not after a quick sale, you could


start a blog. Rememberthe window.com has had more than 80,000 hits since Christian Braun launched it to sell his house on London’s Talgarth Road a year ago. There is a middle way. Online-only estate agents are set to boom now the OFT has recommended easing the rules on property sales. Low overheads mean they charge as little as 0.5% commission (or a £999 flat fee, in the case of Tesco and isold.com), and you’ll get the full service. If the law is amended, prices should plummet to match those of the private sales sites. And you won’t have to sell your own home— or lose your faith in humanity—after all.


PHOTOOSINDIA - EXOTICA/PHOTOLIBRARY.COM


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