Every hour of every day, our immune system is hard at work fighting off anything and everything that could possibly harm our bodies. As college students, we live in an environment where being sick is most definitely the norm.

A natural reaction for many of us when we start feeling sick is to do anything and everything in our power to prevent it from causing us to miss that exciting Tuesday morning lecture (or Friday night party, same difference). So, what happens when you mad-dash across your room to grab your handy-dandy Airborne and it's expired?

Great question, let's find out.

Obviously, college is not a time or place that always supports the most balanced and healthy diets. It prevents many students from getting our 7-9 hours of sleep, as well as regular daily exercise. All of these factors are very important in immune health and that is where Airborne comes in. 

Airborne's main job is to essentially boost the health of your immune system. It has key vitamins, minerals, and herbs that help give your body that extra boost you may be lacking from losing sleep, not exercising or eating well.

The best way I thought to examine the question of "can you take Airborne after it's expired?" is to see what happens to these specific vitamins and minerals after they go past their expiration date.

Airborne consists of Vitamin C, Vitamin E, Vitamin A, zinc, selenium, manganese, and magnesium. These factors work as antioxidants to trigger over 200 enzymes. They also do many other very scientific things a little too complicated for my non-scientific brain.

The main reason vitamins have an expiration date is because taking an expired vitamin or mineral is very different from eating expired food. It does not turn into some kind of toxin that gives you food poisoning, but rather the strength of the supplement just lessens. Therefore, the only problem you're facing taking expired Airborne is how effective it will truly be in boosting your immune health.

So, as you complete that mad-dash across your room only to find an expired bottle of Airborne, do nof fret and know that there is still a possibility it can help keep you from missing you're very exciting Tuesday morning lecture.