If you have the start of a sore throat, or you have a lingering sore throat that you can't seem to get rid of, the cure is the same. Cayenne pepper. Yeah, sounds odd I know. But I can tell you for certain that it works. Just add 1/8 teaspoon of cayenne pepper to a cup of water and gargle. I usually repeat once an hour until my sore throat is gone. But if I have a really bad sore throat, I'll repeat this up to every 15 minutes.