Sick happens

The injury is that I have a cold. The insult is that it is summer.

There is something fundamentally wrong with having a summer cold. The word cold belongs with winter. It is oxymoronic to have a summer cold.

When there is a heat wave outside, you don’t want to cuddle up to a hot water bottle, sip hot fluids and sniff humid air from a vaporizer while you swelter in your own feverish heat wave. It may be wrong philosophically but almost a quarter of all colds happen during warm weather.

The term common cold has nothing to do with temperature but with illness caused by nasty little bugs (usually viruses) that live year round and survive conditions that can render most life forms extinct. There is no where you can hide from germs and viruses.

You must remain bug-vigilant year round – even on vacation. If you want your perfectly planned time-off to stay perfect, you had best plan to take precautions against getting sick and then have a back-up plan in case you, or someone in your vacation party, comes down with a bug.

The most commonly referred to vacation illness is Montezuma’s revenge which basically refers to a food-borne illness. You don’t have to travel outside your home town or country or even be on vacation to be struck down.

As the current tomato scare illustrates, food-borne illness is a year-round, world-wide problem. Summer makes it more of a problem because people gather outside for fun and food and the casual atmosphere of the season easily spills over into a more casual (and less careful) attitude about food safety.

If you do not feel comfortable with the cleanliness of any situation, do not eat or drink there. If you must consume, use manufacturer packaged food and drink.

Hot food needs to stay hot and cold food needs to stay cold. At picnics and other outdoor eating events, do not put the food out until you are ready to eat and put it away promptly. Although the rule is 2 hours from the time food is removed from heat or cold until the time it is returned, summer heat means you should make that closer to 20 minutes. No one is going to have a fun time if spoiled food makes them spend hours in the bathroom, or even worse, emergency room.

Don’t pile food on the plate. It is more likely to linger there and spoil. Take a little bit and come back for more.

Keep bugs (and pets) away from food. You don’t even want to consider the horrors of flies and food.

Keep hands and food surfaces clean. Anyone who is sick should not be around food.

The last two rules apply to avoiding summer colds. Most cold bugs are still spread by contact between your hands and your nose, ears or mouth. Wash your hands regularly and carry hand sanitizers for touch-ups.

While summer heat encourages you to chill out, be careful not to get chilled. Being chilled or feeling cold means your body is being stressed and that makes it less efficient at warding off illness.

Avoid drafts to avoid chills. Like dogs in the open window of a moving car, many of us will cool off by standing in front of a fan or air conditioner. Bad idea for dogs and humans.

When you are awash in a sea of heat and humidity, it may be hard to realize you need to stay hydrated while remaining dry. Seems contradictory, doesn’t it?

Perspiration is a vital part of your body’s cooling mechanism. However, perspiration is only effective if it evaporates off the skin taking heat with it. On humid days when evaporation is difficult, you can sweat buckets and still become overheated.

If your clothing traps the moisture against your skin, you can also become overheated – or contrarily, chilled. Wear fabrics that wick moisture away from the skin.

Keep dry clothes handy for changing into when you leave pool or water areas and if you become drenched in perspiration. Wet clothes can also lead to irritated skin which becomes an opening for germs.

To help avoid illness, the skin and mucus membranes (such as those in mouth and nasal passages) need to remain moist. Cracks and tears in these skin surfaces are entry points for germs and viruses.

A belly flop into ice cold water or the plop of an ice cold drink into your mouth may seem refreshing but they are both a bad idea. Sudden cold stresses the body – not good as noted above.

In another insult to injury, that rush of ice-cold sensation will also make your hotter. The body reacts to the sudden cold extreme by increasing circulation to raise the temperature of the affected tissue surface. In short, your body will make you even hotter to compensate.

Get enough sleep. Yes, it is hard to do that when there are so many things to do, you only have so many hours of vacation, the sun doesn’t go down until later in the day…

Stop making excuses and get the sleep your body needs to stay healthy. If you are so tired you have to drag yourself to any activity or fall asleep in the middle of an activity; you are too tired. If you get sick, you’ll get more sleep but it is easier to get the sleep in the first place and avoid the sick.

Speaking of avoiding illness… Taking precautions and living healthy does not guaranteed you won’t get sick (trust me I know) so remember all your tips on how to deal with the common (and very annoying) cold.

You can take medication to help you deal with the symptoms (antibiotics do not work for a cold) to feel as comfortable as possible and you will feel better in a week to ten days. Or – you can do nothing and feel better in a week to ten days. The injury and the insult.

Read Boomer Journeys and other articles by Alex Carrier in the Greene County Record

Boomer Journeys Index

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