Sometimes an “aha!” moment is a vindication: “I knew it all along!” Sometimes it’s an embarrassment: “Oh no—I’ve been doing/saying it wrong all these years.” And sometimes it’s just “I never thought about it but, yes, that makes perfect sense!”

I had one of the third kind this morning, when I learned (full disclosure: I read it in Parade magazine) that “Getting your immune cells to work better could result in a stronger inflammatory response and more exaggerated symptoms.”

And I realized, that’s why, when I take echinacea or elderberry to shorten the duration of a cold, I think I’ve cured it for about three days, and then it gets much, much worse.

So I’m not crazy, or particularly exceptional. And I’m right, in a way, when I say that those herbal remedies don’t help me. Which is unfortunate, of course. But the discovery was one of those “aha!” moments and, as such, deeply satisfying.