You Sick?
Consider a mother and father with 4 children during the cold and flu season. Inevitably, when one child gets sick, the whole family does too. The question is, how do you keep the germ of the day from knocking out the whole household?
According to Michael Carlston, MD, former assistant clinical professor of family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, the best advice is age-old advice: wash your hands. Wash your hands after using the restroom, before eating, and anytime they're dirty.
But here's the fascinating part of his advice...
Dr. Carlston's objection to using antibacterials is not that they don't work, but rather that they work too well.
He explains that antibacterials get rid of the "friendly" bacteria that humans need. What's left are the more virulent strains that can harm us, minus a lot of the "friendlies" that protect us from the dangerous ones. The use of antibacterial soap actually puts people at a disadvantage. In a study published recently in The Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers found that subjects who used antibacterial soaps get jsut as many runny noses and respiratory infections as those who did not.
Dr. Carlston cautions against becoming overly "germaphobic" as the cold and flu season wears on, and wants you to realize that if you do get sick, it's not totally a bad thing. "There is a utility to getting sick," he says. When you get a little illness like a cold, it gives your immune system a chance to exercise its illness-fighting ability just like exercising your muscles. Like muscle, if you don't use it, you lose it. An immune system that never gets the chance to respond to a challenge will never grow stronger.
Of course, he's not recommending you go out looking for illnesses. It is instinctual and correct to avoid being near a very sick person. (And, if you must be near them, don't forget to wash your hands!) It's just that a little sickness can make us stronger overall.
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