Getting Sick
Before I started eating whole food, plant-based at the end of 2009, I remember getting some kind of cold or bronchitis pretty much every year. I would feel miserable, with coughs, nasal congestion, runny nose, lethargy, and general aches and pains. I would miss a day or two of work. I seldom saw a doctor for these illnesses. I did not try to prevent this with an annual flu shot, as my acquaintances seemed to have about the same occurrences whether they took the shot or not. I would treat it with over-the-counter remedies such as NyQuil, ibuprofen, acetaminophen, and pseudoephedrine.
Since 2010, I can only recall this kind of disease once before, years ago, and now. I had a flu shot last year, for the first time, but I am now sick even so. There is no reason to correlate the shot with being sick. It is 2023, and we have been back from Costa Rica for a week. Kathryn had a cough while we were at the resort in Tambor. I had no symptoms then. After the skydiving boogie, we spent one night in a hotel in San Jose, then five nights at a rental house in Quepos, followed by one more night in San Jose before flying home. While we were in Quepos, we heard that some close friends from the boogie had tested positive for Covid on their return. Since we had Covid tests with us, we took them. We both tested negative for Covid. My symptoms only appeared in the first few days home.
We got home last Sunday. We went to a workout class at the Senior Center last Monday. I did not feel sick then, or I would not have gone. My elbow was bothering me, so I went easy on that arm. We took another class on Tuesday. So I guess I started feeling it on Wednesday. I took another Covid test, which also came out negative. Today is Wednesday again, and I feel mostly recovered. So, I was sick for a week. I could still do what I do in retirement, but I felt poorly and avoided groups where I might spread the infection.
In my experience, because I take medicines such as I listed above only when I need them, they work well for me. For my elbow, ice and rest seem to be the ticket. Obviously, eating right does not guarantee one will never get sick. Anecdotally, it does seem to reduce the frequency of colds. Maybe the severity too. Left untreated, a cold will last a week, but with proper care, a cold will go away in seven days.
From what I understand there are around 200 cold virus types in the world. And essentially more are not being created by Mother Nature, unlike the flu. Once you develop immunity to one, you keep that for life. The average number of viruses you get exposed to that are new to you is about 3 per year. So about around age 70 you’ve been exposed to more or less all of them and you stop catching colds. Realistically, you get exposed to much more of these new ones per year when young and much less when old, so you see kids with lots of colds and older adults with few. So just getting older explains getting less colds – however not other viruses. Personally sometimes I notice the start of cold symptoms, never severe, but then a few hours or a day later this is gone. I don’t have the diet you do, although I try to limit some things, especially sodium and highly processed food.