I used to get a cold now and then when the kid was in pre and grade school and I was with kids all the time. Now that she is 15 and does her own thing more, I simply do not get sick. However, I tried the zinc and herbal stuff with only rare success. I discovered that vitamin C works to cut off or reduce the intensity of colds greatly. The amount of C has to be enormous for it to work. I take a gram an hour when the throws of a cold and it tends to go away in a day. If I know I am exposed to something I or feel something coming, I jump on it right away and it never materialized. I put the limit at about 12 grams of C in a day and never more than 2-3 days at most because the problem goes away by then. I advise others to be careful in self dosing to such great amounts. I’ve tried it and have experience with it so I plan to continue.
PS> I had a history of forming kidney stones years ago, but have never had a problem while using this load of vitamins. I was never sure what caused it. It may have been severe dehydration from working out.
I suffer recurrent lung infections, which no doctor has figured out the source of…have been for the past 6-7 years. They and asthma interact with each other badly. Even before that started I was pretty sickly, and would get a cold, or stomach issues once or twice a month.
I almost never get sick…that is, I don’t catch whatever’s going around. However, I am prone to migraines and sinus trouble, which begets vomiting and usually winds up subtracting a day of my life. This happens approximately once every two months.
Well, I hold out hope that in 10 years or so, I might not get sick so often.
Hey, all you well people - have you ever had mono? I definitely noticed for a long time after having a pretty bad case that I caught every virus that went by. I wonder if it might even still have an effect?
I have three kids (12, 10, and 5) and I almost never get sick even after spending the night in bed with a sick child coughing in my face all night.
Before I had kids I got colds all the time, like almost once a month. The new improved immune system kicked in right after the birth of my first child and I can’t explain it.
However, despite feeling great and having no symptoms, I have doctors telling me that in fact I have something wrong with my thyroid and maybe I have cancer and there’s no test they can ever do to reassure them that I don’t and maybe they should just remove the thyroid…so there’s that.
Seldom. I had a head cold earlier in the year which lasted for a day or two. I don’t think I’ve ever had the 'flu.
I had pneumonia about seven years ago but I was working in an infectious diseases ward, so I could myself lucky I didn’t get pertussis. It was a big year for pertussis.
My whole life I was sick often, usually respitory stuff that would linger on for weeks or months. Now I get sick less than once a year usually, and it’s very mild and quick - like three days of the sniffles.
I don’t have any kids, but I do work with the public and with many co-workers who are mostly sickly. I think I’m much healthier now because I live a very healthy lifestyle and eat an extremely nutritious diet, as well as taking supplements (vitamin D during the winter, and extra when I feel I’m coming down with something, seems to make a big difference).
I get a cold/bug on average about once every six-seven years (five colds in the last 33 years.)
Apart from getting food poisoning twice, and those five colds, I haven’t been sick in 40 years. Nothing at all. I had real, honest-to-goodness flu when I was 14 years old and it was horrible, but that was almost 40 years ago.
In my entire life including school (I’ll be 54 next month) I’ve lost work/school days maybe a week or two total. Never once for being or feeling sick though, but for bad-back flare-ups when I cannot sit or stand up. Otherwise, I got nothing.
To put it simply, I’m sick more often than I’m not sick. I talked to my doctor about it, who had my sinuses X-rayed, which revealed that my sinuses have been thickened from chronic allergies. So I’m currently working with a specialist to discover what I’m allergic to and how to treat it.
FWIW, I mentioned to her my constant sickness in September, and she just brushed it off by saying I should take multivitamins – which I’ve been doing for years. Just because your doctor says it’s normal doesn’t mean it is. If you’re having your doubts, see an ENT specialist.
I get a mild cold about once a year, but the last time I got something debilitating enough to warrant taking time off was probably a decade ago. Can’t recall ever having a real flu, food poisoning, or really anything that went beyond merely annoying.
Ever since I had swine flu in June 2009, I’ve been ill. I eliminated everything that could be causing me to be ill, and made sure I was getting everything that should make me well, and I’m still ill. Today I feel well, but was still coughing and sneezing enough at work that they noticed I had a cold having not seen me since before Christmas. Well, yes, I always have a cold. I take care not to spread the germs, as far as I can.
The week before Christmas, I had to laugh at the picture I represented - flu, a slipped disc and some sort of stomach bug (food poisoning, my doctor, thought); so I was dragging myself along, bent over, wheezing, coughing and sneezing, groaning in pain, occasionally stopping to vomit, shaking like a meth addict in withdrawal, my skin visibly changing colour as my temperature went up and down. Plague, plague!
Not much. I get maybe 1 cold a year. The sickest I’ve ever been was about 15 years ago when I worked at an elementary school, and I got terrible laryngitis along with flu or something. For several years I got laryngitis at the slightest provocation, even if I was hardly sick at all, but that seems to have gotten better.
I have two kids 11 and 8, and they’re very social but they don’t actually go to school, so maybe that helps. They’re hardly ever sick either.
Before I had kids, I would get maybe one mild cold a year, this even when my wife was spending 100 hours a week around sick people during her residency. Since the kids came, I get sick probably 5-6 times a year, including one or two fevers or bronchitises (bronchiti?)
