COLUMN: How To Not Get Sick This Winter
Christmas Break is like summer vacation, except the fatigued college student returns less tan, more fat and only has three weeks to ponder the reasons why he or she attends college instead of the longer time frame of May, June, July and August.
The highest thought in my mind over the last three weeks has been this incessant, freezing, hellish weather, and the ever-present swathe of dingy inversion that welcomes visitors to our lovely valley of cheese. To say the least, when grad school is finished, I’m moving somewhere warm. I don’t much care if it’s California, Arizona or Tasmania, because something even a few degrees above freezing, perhaps Tremonton, would cause less sickness than Cache Valley’s blanket of cold-causing microbes.
I’m serious. Now is the time to guard against illness, because with the additional stress of studying and grades, the cruddy weather and the non-mom nutrition of burritos, fries and pizza, viruses and bacteria are knocking at your door, waiting to lay siege to your health.
Maybe you’re at an Aggie game, cheering and sipping a cool beverage, when surprise, you feel a tickle in the back of your throat. By the end of the night that tickle has evolved into a sneeze, and suddenly you feel cold and achy. Chances are, if you haven’t died from Ebola, that come morning when you stare in the mirror you’ll look like Keith Richards and sound like B.B. King. This is where bathing ends, the lights go out and your face gets plastered on a milk carton.
If you’re like me, for the next seven to 10 days you’ll be hacking and coughing up putrid substances that could be quarantined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Your stomach will hurt, along with your head; chills and cold sweats will rack your disintegrating frame, and your underarms will begin to smell like the green jelly you are collecting in the back of your throat. Overall, not a pleasant situation, unless your cup of tea is hacking loogies and missing class.
To help you (and me) this winter here are some tips to help you stay well.
Before we talk about vitamins, sleep and exercise, let’s discuss our hands. Is it really that hard to wash them on a regular basis? If they smell like sheep, yet you are not a farmer, isn’t that a big clue that perhaps soap, maybe even turpentine, might be needed?
Moreover, and this is an absolute must, hand washing is unequivocally necessary after defiling and laying waste to campus restrooms. To put it mildly, your potty germs are not wanted on doorknobs, telephones and computer lab keyboards. Alternatively, to stay healthy, don’t chew your nails and put your fingers in impolite orifices, this only leads to the spreading and ingesting of sickness causing germs.
Next to the cleaning of hands comes sleep and vitamins.
This is simple. If you sleep under six hours a night, you’re screwed. This principle is elevated with age. When I was 21, sleep was an afterthought, like conditioner and mouthwash. But now, six years later, if I hit the sack past midnight, I’m sucking down caffeine and no-doze the next day. And as for vitamins, well, if you consider Phosphoric Acid and Potassium Benzoate your primary givers of energy, you’ll be coughing up lung cheese in no time. Take a multivitamin once a day.
Lastly, don’t forget to meditate and exercise. Spend some quiet time with your subconscious every day, and try to jog a mile or two three times a week. If that fails, you can be like me, abuse your body and mind, and when the plague burrows its nasty bug inside you, stuff Kleenex up your nose, turn off the lights and begin the seven-day ritual of Nyquil, Robitussin and lots of Advil. You’ll become so drugged and groggy that you’ll forget everything you learned during college and become a drooling, blathering idiot.
All that for not washing your hands.