I’m tired of being sick. Since January, I have gotten pink eye, strep, the flu, carbon monoxide poisoning, a sinus infection and an ear infection that ruptured my right ear drum.
This is ridiculous!!! (Whining).
I exercise nearly daily, weight training, cardio, ride horses, or yoga. I drink lots of water, rarely alcohol (and less lately because of being sick all the darn time). Never smoked, don’t do drugs, aim for and usually get 8 hours of sleep a night. Take fish oil, a daily multivitamin and stuff for my joints. I eat too much sugar, but I eat lots of fruit too. Oatmeal and blueberries is my standard breakfast.
Aaaarrrggg what else can I do to stay healthy!
I just left the doctor where I learned that I had ruptured an ear drum, still had a bad infection and might need to go to a specialist. I’m a bit pitiful right now. Apologies again for the whining.
I was in a vaccine study for an (ineffective, as it turns out) HIV vaccine. The study was administered by the NIH, with a local medical school doing the testing here. Of all the people throughout the country in the study (admittedly a small group), I had the strongest immune response to the vaccine. I attribute it to the fact that I haven’t had an antibiotic in 35 years. I get sick, like everyone else, but I just wait it out, figuring my body is meant to fix itself.
I’m not saying you should do that, particularly with a burst eardrum, but I think your immune system needs to work to build itself. Just figure you’re going to feel lousy for a while and let your body do it’s job.
(Antibiotics don’t do a thing for viruses, so that wouldn’t have affected her susceptibility to influenza, at the very least.)
Well, this isn’t going to help prevent carbon monoxide poisoning, but - wash your hands. Don’t touch your eyes, mouth, nose, or anywhere that’s going to come into contact with them, unless you’ve just washed your hands. And don’t use antibacterial soap, that’s overkill and can contribute to resistant bacteria production.
Consider getting an influenza vaccination next flu season.
The biggest boost for my health was getting out of working in pediatrics. I swore after that many years working in the field I’d surely have run through every variation of the cold virus, but no joy, those lil’ germ factories kept the new strains coming.
I see your healthy lifestyle, but are you taking steps to reduce exposure to germs?
I don’t mean turning into a germphobe and filling your house with every crap product labeled “antibacterial”; that does more harm than good. Just a few common-sense measures like these:
Avoid small children. Of course, if you’re directly related to any, you may just have to accept you’ll get sick a lot. Small children are petri dishes with feet.
Wash your hands. Not just after using the toilet, but whenever possible before touching any of your mucous membranes; that’s where germs get in. This means washing (or if you can’t, using wipes or sanitizer) before
–eating
–drinking
–applying makeup, if applicable
–handling/removing contact lenses, if applicable (of course, if you just got something in your eye and have to remove the lens NOW, do it; pinkeye is nothing compared to a damaged cornea)
–taking medication
–picking your teeth
–picking your nose
–otherwise sticking your digits in your mouth, eyes, ears, or nose. Especially ears, in your case, since you have a ruptured eardrum.
There are also mucous membranes in the anogenital region, but you don’t mention infections there, so I’m assuming those are all right.
Again, I’m not trying to turn you into a germphobe; just exercise reasonable caution. And set a good example for any small children you may be unable to avoid.
Another useful practice is regular nose rinsing (with a Neti pot if you want to go that way, or most simply by snuffling warm water up your nose and blowing it out again), but I’m not recommending that to you because I’m not sure if it’s safe with a ruptured eardrum.
As for the carbon monoxide poisoning, I can’t help you there. If in any doubt, get a detector. Don’t mess with that stuff.
If I were you my next step would be to get food allergy testing. Once you figure out what foods you should avoid your life will be so much better. A naturopathic physician is where you would get this testing. It won’t be inexpensive but your health and life is well worth it. Probably will run you about $200.00 to see a new Dr and get the testing done. I trust the IgG testing the most.
Pink eye, sinus infections, and ear infections can come from flu (or from a cold, but there’s nothing you can do about that). You probably want to get a flu shot next year. If you’re afraid of needles, there is a flu vaccine that they squirt up your nose that you might want to look into instead.
Nobody’s immune system can fight carbon monoxide poisoning. The only thing to do about that is to find out what caused the high concentrations of carbon monoxide and fix that:
If the problem is your furnace or fireplace, I’d get a professional to fix it rather than trying to fix it yourself (poison gas is not something you want to be messing with). If it’s a heater or wood-burning stove, my first thought would be to get rid of it and buy a safer one, maybe an electric heater. If you’re using things like camp stoves that are only supposed to be used outdoors inside your house, don’t do that any more. If you’re using gas-powered tools in enclosed spaces or warming up your car in an enclosed garage, stop doing that if at all possible. Carbon monoxide can leak into the house if you warm up your car in an attached garage.
You probably don’t need to warm up your car unless you’re in an extremely cold climate (I never warm mine up here in Pittsburgh). Modern cars don’t need to be warmed up, in general:
You don’t need to idle your car for 15 minutes to warm it up like some people do. You’ll have to put up with the heater not blowing much hot air for the first few minutes of driving, but a little temporary discomfort is better than carbon monoxide poisoning. If you live in a really cold climate, you may want to look into a block heater for your car.
Really? I’ve never heard that before. I got pink eye in january, the flu in february, the sinus infection last week and the ear infection is ongoing. Could this all still be flu related? I’m quite curious now.
The carbon monoxide poisoning… ok, that was just to add to my whining ;). Fortunately (???) I know exactly where it came from and it shouldn’t happen again. It just added to my months of discomfort and frustration.
No. I’ve gotten pink eye, sinus infections, and ear infections when bacteria grow opportunistically in the snot that I had from a cold or flu. I remember having one in eighth grade where I got both an ear infection and pinkeye- that was not fun. IANADoctor, but if yours are that far apart in time, they’re probably not related.
If you wear eye makeup, you have thrown out any that you used around the time you had pinkeye, right? My doctor told me to make sure I threw out any eye makeup I might have used around the time I got pinkeye.
ETA: I’d also make sure I washed my pillow cases in hot water after I got over the pinkeye, just in case any viruses or bacteria had come out in tears while I was sleeping.
One way I’ve heard to avoid sinus infections is to sleep with your head elevated (maybe sleep on one more pillow than you normally do, unless it makes your neck hurt) when you’ve got a cold or flu that gets your nose and head all stuffy. That supposedly lets the snot drain down into your throat instead of into your sinuses. I find it helps my sinuses drain when I do have a sinus infection, too.
Don’t blow your nose too hard when you’ve got a stuffy nose (or sinus infection). You can blow gunk into your ears through your Eustachian tubes that way. If you have a sinus infection, it could possibly cause an ear infection.
If you get antibiotics prescribed, take all of them as directed. Don’t stop taking them when you feel better and “save some for later”.
Never been much of a makeup wearer, so that wasn’t an issue.
That’s a good idea, though I don’t think it would work for me personally, my neck aches if I add a pillow ever. Might try it next time anyway.
Can you explain how that would happen? I’m not getting it.
That’s never a problem! I took Microbiology when I was younger, loved it, and did an experiment on antibiotic resistant bacteria. The studying relating to the experiment taught me alot. I alway use my antibiotics completely unless my doctor tells me otherwise.
I hate to say it, but honestly, I think some people are just going to always be more prone to being sick.
Admittedly, I don’t smoke or drink (very often, anyway :D) but I don’t really take great care of myself and I am rarely sick. Always been that way. Now, much like St Germain, I also wait it out most of the time. If I admit it’s time to see the doctor, either I know with certainty that it is a treatable thing (like strep) or I have been sick for weeks with the same thing. It doesn’t happen often. I don’t wash my hands as much as I “should,” I don’t get enough sleep most of the time, I don’t eat “right” all the time and I sure as hell don’t exercise as much as I need to, and yet – healthy as hell.
My kids skew the curve too. Pink eye lasts approximately 24 hours in any of us, stomach bugs? Fugheddaboudit. We’re just healthy stock. Now, my daughter has had bronchitis for a couple weeks, but it’s the first thing in a long time for her.
My advice to build a healthy immune system is not to take antibiotics if you can tough it out instead. Drink lots of water. Don’t wear a jacket unless it’s below 30 (F). Don’t use antibacterial hand gels/lotions/soaps/whatever. Try to do things that make you happy and don’t stress over shit. Oh, yeah, and don’t sit in the car in the garage with the engine running – WTF? How did you manage to get CO poisoning!!!
CO2 poisoning came from a gas leak in a fire place, not at my home. It was horrible, never again.
I guess the weird things is I don’t normally get sick! I’ve always been a fairly healthy individual, just the past few months I’ve been getting knocked on my butt. That’s part of the reason for the concern, this is different!
Have you changed jobs recently, or are you interacting with a different group of people than you were before? I found that I got sick a lot right after I started a job where a lot of my colleagues had small children, after going from a university environment where there weren’t a lot of people with small children.
Or it might just be chance and small-number statistics. There’s a lot more random chance to who gets sick and who doesn’t than a lot of people would like to admit. There’s nothing that you could do that would mean you’d never get sick (well, you could move to the South Pole or something like that, but you probably wouldn’t want to).
I don’t bother going to the doctor with something like a cold. They’re just going to tell me to rest and drink lots of liquids, it should be gone in a week. I only go if it’s something treatable (with antibiotics or the like) or something likely to cause long-term problems.
I think not rushing to the doctor to get antibiotics every time you’re sick is possibly good for your immune system and almost certainly good for public health. If you’re taking antibiotics for a viral infection (when you don’t need them), you’re just contributing to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which isn’t good for anybody. I don’t know but I suspect that the current trend toward “antibacterial everything” has a similar effect, and save the antibacterials for where they’re really needed (hospitals and the like, not my hands or kitchen counters or handles of shopping carts).
I’ll tell you the truth, I only stopped getting sick a lot when I quit going to school. I don’t just mean grade school or college dorms - even grad school! Now I work at a public library and I have the immune system of a god. I come into contact with more germs before lunch than most people see all day, and I’m including kindergarten teachers. I hand the newspaper back and forth between homeless people all day. I probably have tuberculosis hanging out in my lungs that could beat up your honor student.
For sinus issues you might try the neti pot. There was a big thread hear about it not too long ago. Many will swear by it. I admit I find it a bit torturous and don’t do it as much as I should but when I do I think it helps colds and sinus issues clear up faster.
Not sure if you should attempt this with a ruptured ear drum though, ask you doctor about it.