ZINC SUPPLEMENTATION SHORTENS THE DURATION OF COLDS BY APPROX. 33%

The best thing for bronchitis is 2-4 mg of vitamin C every 4 hours, OptiZinc because it's the most absorbable variety and 10,000 to 40,000IU of vitamin D for one week.  Be sure to add vitamin A to that to make the D more absorbable.  NCBI observes that

Considering zinc, the supplementation may shorten the duration of colds by approximately 33%.

Consider in a 72 hour period what a double dose of zinc would do to bronchitis?  One of the reasons why I think zinc works so well with most people is that most people are zinc deficient.  We just never got enough growing up, and so our innate immunity may only be bolstered by innate things that kids do, like playing outdoors.  Certainly, with oysters being the highest in zinc content when it comes to food, my guess is that few kids are consuming oysters on a regular basis.  So by the time we're in our 20s, 30s, and 40s, we're kind of zinc deficient.  There are benefits to maintaining your immune system in the first place.  Most people don’t really enjoy the activity of self-care since it involves daily calorie vigilance or supplement intakes or exercise or all three.  It’s a full-time job with little to no reward except when you get sick.  But who wants to commit to a regimen that only minimizes or prevents you from getting sick?  Not much of a reward there at the end of that rainbow, huh, Kimosabe?  But look at what this study published at NCBI stated,

Maintaining the immune defense system within a normal healthy state lowers the incidence of infection and/or lessens the severity of symptoms and/or shortens the duration of common colds.

But if you don’t like getting sick in the first place, if you’d prefer to be on top of your vocational game 24/7, then I recommend supplementing, in part, because of the accumulative effect of stress.  We don’t see a cold or fever coming on.  When I got bronchitis recently, I sure couldn’t see it coming on.  But I was out working late in the snow and did not prepare for the extended hours out in that cold, snowy evening.  And I worked late into that night.  I like working.  I like completing assignments, which I did but at a cost.  The bronchitis was deep in my chest.  And my cough was productive for one full week.  But I took exactly what I described above and the symptoms shortened, and I believe the duration of bronchitis itself shortened.  There is no greater pleasure than being able to breathe fully.  Take that inhale, oh, yeah!

Here is a final sampling of how zinc up-regulates your innate immunity . . . from NCBI: 

Zinc supplementation increases cellular components of innate immunity (e.g., phagocytosis by macrophages and neutrophils, natural killer cell activity, and generation of oxidative burst) [10].

Neutrophil granulocytes, macrophages: large amounts of oral zinc significantly impaired polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNL) function and, in vitro, zinc potentiated the neutrophil response against Staphylococcus aureus [11]. Zn supplementation (150 mg/d) in elderly also induces a decrease in granulocyte zinc that has implications in phagocytosis and chemotaxis [41]. 

Natural killer: a supplementation of zinc (in vitro studies or 100mg/d in elderly) improves natural killer (NK) cells activity, as argued by a lot of authors [9, 11, 39, 42]. Zinc administration decreased peripheral. 

For more on zinc from one of the best nutritional reviewers in the English-speaking world, check out what Bill Sardi says about zinc.