[alligator]

Man, first one of my boys gets sick on Friday. Then another one gets sick on Saturday. Both are pretty much better now, but then guess what? Yep, my wife is sick today. That leaves me wondering (1) will I be next, and (2) how do I occupy my kids time when it's -9 outside? ARGGGHH!!! Good thing the sickness appears to last only 24 hours. Although I like it, I hate being the only one not sick.

I really want to be at work tomorrow to finish up some year end stuff. Maybe I'll get sick and have a long X-mas holiday.

[ambush]

I was sick during my final exams.

[Cubeoid]

I was sick yesterday morning, and the previous night (as some of my posts may indicate, however, besides barfing, i was uncivilized) Tis' the season.

[TheBadgerHunter]

Originally posted by alligator:
Man, first one of my boys gets sick on Friday. Then another one gets sick on Saturday. Both are pretty much better now, but then guess what? Yep, my wife is sick today. That leaves me wondering (1) will I be next, and (2) how do I occupy my kids time when it's -9 outside? ARGGGHH!!! Good thing the sickness appears to last only 24 hours. Although I like it, I hate being the only one not sick.

I really want to be at work tomorrow to finish up some year end stuff. Maybe I'll get sick and have a long X-mas holiday.

24 Hours? Thats worrying.

-9? Ya big sissy!

[Madison]

My 7 year old daughter was up puking all night Wednesday and missed school on Thursday. My 1 year old son was up all night puking on Friday and still has bad diarrhea tonight. My wife went to bed early last night sick to her stomach, and spent all day in bed today ready to wretch...just me left. Apparently my cast iron stomach has resisted the sickness...so far.




Tom

[alligator]

Yeah, a cast iron stomach. That must be what I have too.

Gets worse though - son #1 (the one sick on Friday, but better now) is now sick again. Great. Round 2. At least this time he isn't barfing.

Of course, my wife gets the bed - which means I get the sofa. Here's to a wonderful night sleep. Then again, I can't complain - I'm not sick.

[crazyjohnson]

Start taking 500mg - 1000mg of C with Rose Hips.

[bstone]

A lot of it has to do with the weather becoming colder, people spending more time in doors, and viruses (yes, these are viruses usually, not bacterial infections) being more easily transmitted.

Some steps to avoiding getting sick (in no particular order of importance):

* Get enough sleep
* Get some exercise
* Eat a healthy, well balanced diet with plenty of fruits and veggies
* Drink plenty of water and avoid caffinated drinks and colas
* Take a multi-vitamin/mineral
* Showed at least once every 3 days (there is evidence to show that showering daily leads to more infections as the body's immune system isn't as roboust as it could be)
* Wash your hands often, espically after being around someone who is sick and leaking (running nose, sneezing, barfing, etc)
* Wash dishes throughly and well, hot water and soap

If you do get sick with a stomach flu, go easy on it. Rest as much as possible, don't necessarily hold down the need to puke. Same goes for a regular flu, but a cold you might want to keep mildly active.

How to know if you have a cold or a flu

Good luck and stay healthy!

Your favorite bio grad student, EMT and future Internal Medicine/Emergency Medicine physician,

bstone

[yukon]

Any more info on that showering thing? That link to the cold/flu info is awesome.

Someone said that having a high quality air filter drastically reduced the number of infections in their dorm or something, not sure if this is true. It seems like there's two sides battling, "The cleaner you are, the less your immune system has to do and slowly weakens" versus "By keeping clean and killing bacteria and viruses in your environment, you reduce your chances of infection", I'm surprised there's not much research on this.

[bstone]

You basically hit it on the head. Prof Andrew Weil at the Univ of Arizona has some interesting things to say about it. He thinks all the anti-bacterial this, that and the other thing is only serving to: 1) make stronger bacteria which are more resistant to anti-biotics and 2) desensitize our immune systems and make us unable to fight off infections we once would have no problems with

Of course there's a lot of debate to this and it's also a relatively unresearched area. While it makes sense and it's something I am willing to seriously consider, the scientific facts are yet to make up their mind.

Until then, just play it safe and don't anti-bacterialize everything but also don't totally deep six it either.

[Xeo]

I don't get sick. I ignore everything but blinding headaches and it goes away before it gets worse. I think some people get all worked up every time their stomach is a bit upset and they end up making themselves sick by thinking they will be. Your mind can be pretty powerful. By knowing I don't get sick, I don't. It's a good cycle to be in.

(knock on wood...)

[Cubeoid]

Originally posted by bstone:
You basically hit it on the head. Prof Andrew Weil at the Univ of Arizona has some interesting things to say about it. He thinks all the anti-bacterial this, that and the other thing is only serving to: 1) make stronger bacteria which are more resistant to anti-biotics and 2) desensitize our immune systems and make us unable to fight off infections we once would have no problems with

Of course there's a lot of debate to this and it's also a relatively unresearched area. While it makes sense and it's something I am willing to seriously consider, the scientific facts are yet to make up their mind.

Until then, just play it safe and don't anti-bacterialize everything but also don't totally deep six it either.

Right on. Andrew Weil has some great things to say about health and nutrition. I recomend any of his books.

[wolfen]

Originally posted by Xeo:
I ignore everything but blinding headaches ...

How often do you get those?!

[DarwinX]

I was at a hockey game yesterday and a kid behind me puked all over. Good times, not!

[bstone]

Originally posted by DarwinX:
I was at a hockey game yesterday and a kid behind me puked all over. Good times, not!

All over you or just all over?

I remember as a kid once I kept complaining I felt sick. Nobody believed me. Then I puked in the car and every believed me.

[DarwinX]

Originally posted by bstone:
All over you or just all over?

Not all over me thankfully. He was seated directly behind me and it ended up all over the floor. How none of it ever got on me is beyond me?!

[Eriamjh]

I can't resist....

[DarwinX]

Originally posted by Eriamjh:
I can't resist....

It was green just like that too!!! Ahhhhh! Nightmares!

[alligator]

Man, I got it too. Spent the entire day in bed yesterday, and now I feel much better.

I'm lucky though, no barfing.

Now everyone's had it, and we should be over it. Doesn't it suck getting sick? Why does the human body do this to us??????

[ThinkInsane]

Must be something going around. I just saw on the noon news that a local elementary school has closed because more than half of the students are out sick. They said they are going to decon the building over Christmas break. Sounds... prudent.

[yukon]

Lots of things kill bacteria, what "kills" (destroys) viruses? I know bleach does, I could only guess boiling water might....all you have to do is bleach your entire house, just pour it on everything and swim in it, and then you get really sick. Oh wait, no, have someone ELSE bleach your house, then clean it out, and you won't get the flu. ISTR hearing that some kind of filter could stop viruses, though that's damn impressive, sounds expensive.

edit: I've heard of anti-viral medication, nothing about how effective or expensive.

[Lancer409]

Just started getting the persistent nondescript cough and flowing open faucet nose yesterday. Hope I can still lift weights =P. Yesterday I noticed the weights felt heavier than usual and I was having a little trouble breathing (throat felt like it was semi blocked with mucus). Fun.

[alligator]

I've noticed that when I was training for a marathon, on days when I had a cold, I could feel better by running. You'd think that would be miserable since you can't breathe, but by running, everything opened up and I felt a lot better.

With the flu, I asked my wife for a baseball bat so I could knock myself out. Lucky for me, she woudn't bring me one.

By the way, I tried that Lysol stuff, but it kills bacteria. Since I'm horible in biology, how does bacteria differ from a virus?

[yukon]

Bacteria are like tiny animals, just single cells that go around doing stuff. They can do bad things to you, they can help you, most help but some are nasty. Viruses aren't living, they're almost like a freak accident that piggybacked on evolution of life (AFAIK) and evolved themselves through it. They are small containers made of protein and phosphate and another chemical, with genetic material inside - it hooks onto living cells, inserts it's genetic material, which usually instructs the cell to reproduce the virus, often causing cell death as it reproduces the viruses as fast as possible. We're just finding that humans have evolved with viruses, much of our DNA is from viruses apparently, very interesting stuff. They aren't alive, so you can't really kill them, you can weaken their protein shell, alter the genetic instructions it carries, or try and destroy it outright, kill everything that lives and the viruses would all be destroyed in time. Bacteria cause the common cold (uncurable because it evolves fast), viruses cause the flu (the virus also evolves fast, but slower, so outbreaks can be predicted and vaccinated against), both can cause a multitude of other stuff too of course :-(

Bleach destroys viruses, really high temperatures also do which is why I think boiling water might, it would be nice if something else did though....?

[d0ubled0wn]

The only time I've puked from being sick is from food poisoning (well, alcohol poisoning too I guess but I don't count those times ). Over 10 years ago my friends and I went to the Olive Garden for dinner and I remember having the Tour of Italy, a sampler plate of fettuccini alfredo, lasagna, and chicken parmigiana. The food tasted great. But on our way home, about a half hour later I felt rumblings down below. Then almost without warning I felt like was going to blow chunks right in the back seat... I told them to pull over RIGHT NOW. I got out just in time to puke up the fetuccini, lasagna and chicken. Yeah I left one hell of a mess in the Taco Bell parking lot I was kneeling on . I was layed out for 3 days before I felt better. It must have been the chicken.

Then just last week the same friend that was driving that fateful night was at the Olive Garden for lunch eating pasta fagioli. He bit into something hard, he thought it was a veggie stalk or something and tried to swallow it down but it wouldn't go down. He spat out a big copper staple used for boxes. He's lucky the staple didn't go down because it would have really hurt coming out the other end.

Anybody else have food posioning stories?

[wdlove]

I'm sorry to hear about all those on the forum that are getting sick. The 24 hour bug seems to be very active. Certainly no fun to be sick at any time, but especially around the holidays. Here's to a healthy recovery.

[cjrivera]

Originally posted by d0ubled0wn:

Anybody else have food posioning stories?

Only if alcohol is considered food....

[V]

Originally posted by yukon:
Bacteria cause the common cold (uncurable because it evolves fast), viruses cause the flu (the virus also evolves fast, but slower, so outbreaks can be predicted and vaccinated against), both can cause a multitude of other stuff too of course

Cold is not a bacterial infection, it's caused by viruses of families like Rhinoviridae and Coronaviridae. The flu is caused by Orthomyxoviridae (Ex: Influenza sp). Cold sometimes degenerate (surinfections) to bacterial infections like bronchitis, sinus infection and ear infection which will be treated with antibiotics.

[yukon]

My mistake. For some reason I always see bacteria and virus, cold and flu.

[nredman]

Originally posted by alligator:
Man, first one of my boys gets sick on Friday. Then another one gets sick on Saturday. Both are pretty much better now, but then guess what? Yep, my wife is sick today. That leaves me wondering (1) will I be next, and (2) how do I occupy my kids time when it's -9 outside? ARGGGHH!!! Good thing the sickness appears to last only 24 hours. Although I like it, I hate being the only one not sick.

I really want to be at work tomorrow to finish up some year end stuff. Maybe I'll get sick and have a long X-mas holiday.

get out of minnesota before you infect me!!! just kidding

[rozwado1]

Originally posted by Xeo:
I don't get sick. (knock on wood...)

I haven't been "stay at home" sick in 6 years. I have also been working out for about 6 years. Coincidence?

[Angus_D]

Some people here have got/just had the mumps, which kind of sucks.