Blog.Andrei.MD

How to cure cold quickly OR why you need to stay at home when you get sick.

Last week I got a little bit sick. Caught a cold somewhere. It doesn’t matter where I got it. What matters is that I quickly realised that I’m getting sick and took some steps rarely taken by people in general.

What usually happens when you feel like you’re coming down with a cold? Not much. You go on doing what you do, hoping that it will be a mild episode. That means going to work, catching public transport, socializing with people. When you feel that you’re really coming down, you either go on doing what you do telling yourself that you are strong and it will go away, or you stay at home. Those who stay at home are usually people with a bit more social responsibility - they don’t want to get other sick, or those who are so sick they can’t go to work.

That was just an introduction of how I see people behave when getting a cold or coming down with a flu-like virus.

So what do you need to do to recover quickly and with only a mild down time?

1) Stop acquiring new germs

You don’t think about this one when you get sick. You think you are the sickest person around and everyone is at the mercy of your sneeze. I tend to think otherwise. Do you know how people die from AIDS? Their immune system is weak and they die from simple things like cold or cuts and all sorts of other little things that produce a compounding effect quite quickly.

When you get sick your immune system is under stress. It is fighting really hard to get rid of the nasty germs. Immune system is not infinite in its power or area of coverage. When you go about your life like nothing happened (which is exactly how you got infected in the first place), you go on acquiring new germs. And what happens when you get new germs? Your immune system can’t be focused on one spot, it has to fight on all fronts.

So how do you stop acquiring new germs?

Wash your hands ALL THE TIME (easy) - this is more of a lifestyle thing. Many people don’t bother washing hands after using the restroom or before eating. There’s no magic bullet here - you need to train yourself to do it.

Stop touching things (hard) - Stop shaking hands with people. Stop kissing people. Stop touching your face. Stop touching things that other people touch. Stop touching your pets. And wash your hands. And since you can’t stop picking your nose, you can’t stop touching yourself. So go and wash your hands.

Stop being around other people (easy) - Other people tend to carry stuff that your immune system has to fight. This is not a problem in general. When your immune system is weakened, you need to localise the problem and allow your immune system to fight one enemy with full force. People sneeze, cought spit and pick their noses. This tends to spread whatever they may have at the time. Especially coughing and sneezing - you don’t know when they are going to do it, so you should avoid them altogether.

2) Give your body enough fuel

Give your body plenty of water and plenty of vitamins in the form of good food. Drink water, tea and eat salads. No, cheese or tuna sandwiches are not enough. Vegemite toast either. Tomatoes, Apples and Mandarins will be of help.  And remember to wash your hands before you eat.

3) Be mildly active

Walk around. Staying in bed is not so good. Being on the couch all day watching TV is not good either. You need to be active to have the blood circulating and body stimulated to be alive. This doesn’t mean running around and doing exercise like crazy. Go for a walk.

4) Keep Warm

Your body doesn’t need to spend the precious energy keeping your body warm. Help out a little. I got myself some UGG boots and don’t understand how I could live without them.

5) Laugh and be Creative

This stimulates your brain and gives you a reason to live, which is exactly what your body needs to hurry up recovering.

To summarise: Your Body Needs Your Help. If you just assume that everything will become ok if you go on without changing your routine, you do not understand yourself.

This little guide is enough to get you recovering fast.

If you care about money more than you do about your own comfort and health, then go to work, spread the germs, get new germs and be like everyone else.

Impressions of Coogee Beach on a busy day

Every now and again I go to Coogee Beach. This is a small beach and it gets packed with people on a hot summer day. Lately I’ve been noticing that the water is salty. I know, sea water is salty, but still… not that salty. I noticed it mostly on sizzling hot days and tried to attribute it to some effect direct sun has on water. Last week I realised that the sun is having an effect, but it’s having an effect on people and drives them to get into the water. And what do people do when they are in the water? They behave like fish - they relieve themselves (number one) without much thought. What else happens when it’s hot? People drink lots of water and other liquids. What happens when people drink lots of liquids? They relieve themselves. What happens when people need to relieve themselves and are at the beach? They go into the water. Why? Because you don’t have to put your shoes on - toilets are dirty. Why are toilets dirty? Because the stuff that comes out of us is called waste for a reason - it’s like engine exhaust - stuff our bodies cannot digest. Because we’re not the only inhabitants of this planet, other organisms have adapted to using our waste for energy. Some of those creatures are bacteria that should not find it’s way back into our system because it is stronger than bacteria that we have on the inside. So new bacteria takes over and we get sick. That’s why I think we like to put shoes on when we go to the toilet.

Ok, so what happens back in the water? If there is a thousand people in the water - quite a reasonable number i think - the chances are that at any one time somebody is letting something out. Given that it’s not always the same one thousand people in the water, the army of relievers is always rotating it’s members. This means that the process of contamination is almost always taking place. I know, that the sea is a big place and all our urine gets diluted. Here the question is “How Fast”. Coogee beach is a little place and my suspicion is the turnover is not fast enough.

To visualise this better, imagine that there a toilet on the beach. The toilet allows only one person to go in. The line to the toilet is always a thousand people long (because the beach has a few thousand people). Nobody is swimming. Now imagine that there is a pipe from the toilet that simply dumps all the urine into the water. Would you go into the water? Maybe you would go to the side as far away from the pipe as possible. Still you wouldn’t feel very ‘clean’ when you came out. What about if instead of constant runoff in one location, the stream was pulverised and the the first 10 meters of water were constantly sprayed with urine mist? Each point would get negligible amounts of contamination at one point in time, but over time it would add up. Would you go into the water now?

It’s like peeing into your wetsuit. You do it once, and it stays with you untill you get out of the suit.

That’s why I do not like to share the beach with great crowds on a calm day. The water gets too salty for some reason.

PS: Mythbusters showed that urine DOES NOT attract sharks.