Currently viewing the category: "sick"

Got Germs?

By On · Add Comment · In bacteria, C-reactive protein (CRP), children, Filipino, germs, infectious diseases, inflammation, sick, virus
Don’t let me say I told you so, but…

A recent study proves that we must be exposed to germs as kids or risk getting sicker as adults. Duh! Told you so.

This, oh-my-god-don’t-come-near-me-if-your-sick stuff is pointless, and detrimental in the long run. Consider getting sick as updating your computer virus scan–same idea. Check it:

A recent U.S. study that followed thousands of participants from birth (in the 1980s) to 22 years of age showed that although Filipino children were exposed to many more infectious diseases than their American counterparts, they had much less inflammation as adults. Inflammation was measured by the concentration of C-reactive protein (CRP) which is an indicator of the body fighting off infection.

According to Thomas McDade, lead author of the study, “CRP concentrations are incredibly low in Filipinos compared to people in the United States and that was counter to what a lot of people would have anticipated because we know that Filipinos have higher exposure to infectious diseases.” The take home lesson, McDade stressed is the importance of being exposed early in life to common microbes and bacteria.

Why? Again, exposure to infectious agents updates the virus scan. Says McDade, “These bacteria and microbes may never result in outright clinical disease but they do play an important role in promoting the development of regulatory networks.”

I know, I know, dude…I’ve been telling them. You’ve got to get sick. It’s healthy, get it? Sick is health. I know it doesn’t make complete sense, but life is tricky. So is health. To be truly healthy, you’ve got to be sick sometimes. No biggie. Swine flu, bring it on. Rhinovirus, bring it on. Chicken pox, bring it on. Kids and adults have gotta be prepared.

Here goes another cool way to think about it: McDade, who has a two-and-a-half-year-old son, likened immune system development to the way Americans promote brain development in infants and toddlers by exposing them to “all sorts of cognitive and social stimuli. There’s rapid brain growth early in life and there are lots of neurological connections being formed, and you need to engage with your environment in order to promote those connections.”

So observe the ten-second-rule: Your kid drops food on the floor, you’ve got ten seconds, have Pumpkin pick it up and eat it. On second thought, drop the rule altogether–just let Pumpkin eat. It’s for her health.

Oh, and I told you so.

My Gift to My Family

By On · Add Comment · In atlas, C1 vertebra, chiropractic adjustment, cold, cough, fever, Gordon the Express Train, neck adjustment, runny nose, sick, vomit

As I’ve been keeping you all updated, Delilah, my daughter, has been sick. She’s got a nasty cold, the one that many of you have probably had, too; you know, runny nose, incessant cough, fever. She has been better–that is, no fever–but the cough has been waking her (and us) at night. She sometimes coughs so much that she throws up. Much of that, I think is because she doesn’t yet know how to blow her nose or clear her bronchioles, so she’s swallowing all the mucus. When she vomits (it’s more like an upchuck) it’s a mucousy spittle.

Anyway, yesterday was pretty bad in that she hadn’t slept but a few hours. The cough kept her up most of the night–it was awful. Since I hadn’t adjusted her in awhile, I thought I’d check her neck. I had her turn her head left, then right–she had way more movement to the right. So we laid her down, and she struggled a bit. I told her that if she’d let me adjust her I would take her to Barnes and Noble at the Grove and we’d get that Gordon the Express Train from the Thomas the Tank Engine series. She let me. Bribery works really well, I’ve found.

So I went ahead and set her up, neck turned all the way to the left (see picture above), and with a quick move–crack!!!–her neck blasted, louder than I’ve ever heard in a child. Then came the tears. But I just reminded her of Barnes and Noble at the Grove, and of Gordon, and the crying lasted for all of about…oh, ten seconds.

I don’t know if the chiropractic adjustment made her cold any better–her nose is still running today (anyway, that’s health in my opinion, but that’s another blog post, altogether)–but I’ll tell you what happened immediately, she started getting sleepy, and shortly thereafter, she crashed. She stayed asleep for about three hours. And when she woke up, no runny nose, great appetite, very playful–I was psyched, to say the least.

Like I said, she’s still battling the cold. Her nose is a little runny, and she coughed a bit last night; but it didn’t keep her up. She got her Gordon the Express Train, and there were lots of smiles along with it. And she got her atlas (C1 vertebra) adjusted, which, cold or no cold, is good for her health. I’m so happy I have this gift to give to my family.

Illness: A Mind Trip

By On · Add Comment · In death, healthy, illness, immunity, innate healing power, internal environment, poor health, resistence, sick, thoughts

Get ready for this one. I believe that people who are sick a lot–you know the ones: the co-worker who is often absent from work, your Aunt Tilly with the bad case of rheumatism, the lady down the street with 30 different maladies–create an internal environment of poor health. This unhealthy internal environment weakens the body, and over time, stresses of the external environment break down the body and lead to premature death.

What is this internal environment? It starts with the mind. People who see themselves as sick, people who use being sick as a tool for emotional support, and/or people who wholeheartedly buy into their illness as described to them by their doctors or the popular culture, lower their resistance and immunity, and hamper the innate healing power of their bodies. In other words, the mind that sees itself as sick, gets sick and stays sick.

BS Campos? Really, check this out: A recent British study found that people who were out sick from work for extended periods, even if generally “healthy” at the time of the study, were more likely to die prematurely than people who didn’t take such time off. What? Listen again: The study looked at approximately 6,500 government workers from 1985-1988 and followed them through 2004. The workers who had one or more periods of extended leave–out of work for more than one week–were 66% more likely to die in the study period than people who hadn’t taken such leave.

Now wait a second, Campos; weren’t these people simply ill to begin with? Of course, they’ll die earlier.

No. Many of the workers who died “were in good health at the beginning of the study,” according to Jenny Head, a statistician at University College London who led the study. True, it would make sense for people who had cancer or circulatory problems to need extended leaves of absence, and also to die earlier. However, the results also showed earlier death for people who had called in sick for minor complaints such as coughs and colds and flu. Wow! Mind tripper.

So I go back to my original point: People who see themselves as sick; that is, they believe they are ill, not well, unhealthy, and so forth, create an internal environment, through their thoughts, that weaken the body and leave them susceptible to early breakdown and disease, and eventually death. People who see themselves as healthy know they will bounce back, and that they will be OK. What do people who know they’ll be OK do? They move on with their lives. They go back to work, or don’t take off at all–they know that they’ll feel better shortly, so they keep on truckin’.

The researchers did not come to this conclusion. It’s mine. It hasn’t been tested yet, nor proved. It’s simply my theory. The researchers did not know the connection between early extended sick leave and premature death; they only found it a curiosity and thought it might be useful data for doctors to screen or be able to predict later illness and death in people. Yeah, I definitely think it’s good for that. But I also think I have a good working hypothesis. It’s the direction of my current research. Stay tuned.

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