Why am I so susceptible to germs?

Over the past 8-10 years or so it seems like I have been very ill at least 4 times a year. Not with the sniffles or anything, but with vomiting, chills and fever types of illnesses. I wash my hands regularly and take a multivitamin every day but that doesn’t seem to stop me from getting sick.

At first I thought it was because I worked for huge companies with hundreds of employees all bringing their germs into the building. Then I went to work for a much smaller company but still continued to be sick pretty regularly. Then I moved to New York and I figured that since I take public transportation I am obviously picking up germs on the train. Then I quit my job to be a stay at home mom and haven’t been on a train more than twice a month or so for the last 5 months and I’m still laid up for the third time since then with some kind of unpleasantness.

And the weirdest part is that it is really rare for the people around me to catch whatever I’ve got. I can think of twice in the last 3 years that someone close to me picked up my germs and got sick but even my daughter, who has no real immune system yet, doesn’t get sick from being around me. While I am very happy no one else I know is getting sick like this it is just very weird to me that I am getting so sick from things that don’t impact the people around me at all. It has gotten to the point where I dread going to the doctor or pharmacy for something routine because I just know that all the sick people there are going to foist their illnesses upon me.

Does this kind of thing happen to anyone else? Is there anything I can do short of wearing rubber gloves and a surgical mask everywhere I go to avoid being sick all the time?

I guess you’re still living in the city, and every time you go anywhere you’re sharing germs with them. When I was pregnant I worked from home and developed some kind of temporary agoraphobia; I didn’t get sick the whole time. Before that I’d been working in the office and getting really sick about three times a year.

Do you get good nutrition? Do you get enough sleep (haha, isn’t that a stupid question, you have a baby)? Do you wear yourself out while you’re awake?

Some people just seem genetically predisposed to get sick. I don’t know why. Perhaps their bodies have a stronger reaction to germs than others–like, everyone is fighting off an infection as often as you are, it’s just that you’re made miserable by it while some people aren’t?

(hey, this is in imho. wild-ass speculation is fair game).

Vitamin C seems to help me with the normal kid type illnesses like colds and flu. I take 500mg to 1g if someone is already sick and many grams per day I I do get sick.

But your symptoms seem almost stress induced. This could explain why others are not getting sick from you. Stress is somewhat like high blood pressure. You can’t just dial it down at will. It might be worth researching.

I wouldn’t bother with it:

Are you chronically sleep deprived? Not with the baby, I mean from before the baby? Do you have sleep problems/insomnia/apnea?

*[in a 2009 study reported in the] medical journal Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers report that they deliberately infected 153 healthy men and women, average age 37, with cold viruses to find out the relationship between sleeping habits and susceptibility to colds.

The scientists found that those who slept for less than seven to eight hours a night were about three times more likely to get a cold than longer sleepers. Those who slept less well – spending less than 92% of their time in bed actually asleep – were five and a half times more likely to get a cold than others.*

How’s your diet? I’ve observed that people who tend to get sick more often than others sometimes have poor dietary habits - either eating too much junk or following poor weight-loss diets or just not eating enough.

Do you get much exercise too?

Do you know your vitamin D status? There are tons of studies that suggest that vitamin D is an important modulator of the immune system:

http://ajrccm.atsjournals.org/content/176/2/208.short

http://www.ajcn.org/content/early/2010/03/10/ajcn.2009.29094.abstract

http://www.nature.com/nrrheum/journal/v4/n8/full/ncprheum0855.html

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-3083.2008.02127.x/abstract

I do suffer from insomnia pretty regularly. Even on a good night I might only get 5 hours of sleep and I’m tired pretty much all the time.

I don’t, actually. I’ll talk to my doctor about this right away!

Just out of curiosity, what was your level of pathogen exposure as a child? My own, totally anecdotal, single data point, not necessarily generalizable observation is this: We are a military family, and my children were raised in several US states, and lived in two foreign countries, and visited many more. In addition, they were also exposed to vast amounts of people who had been to even more exotic places. I figure they got their, and several other people’s, share of exposure to germs in their childhood. (Plus, I wasn’t exactly Martha Stuart, if you know what I mean.)

Now, as adults, they never get sick. My son was one of only two people in his whole basic training/advanced training unit that never went to sick call. However, his wife, who spent her entire life in a small part of Florida, seeing the same people all her life, is a different story. They moved to Fort Riley, Kansas, and she promptly got every bug, ever. She was more or less constantly sick for about two years. At one point, my son stated that she “Has the immune system of a Romanov child.” It really makes me wonder if their respective childhood immune challenges have something to do with it.

Anecdotally, when the little snows were really little, our house was racked by sickness on a regular basis. The adults seemed to suffer longer than the small ones. I suspected those sick times were due to having little kids around - perhaps they were great petri dishes for anything in the community. Whatever, and whomever they play with, probably left a little something on them for us to pick up. In recent years, illnesses have been less frequent. It may be due to the kids getting older and better hand-washing, but I always thought homes with little kids tend to have more illess. Just my observation and YMMV.

I lived in a suburb of North Dallas until I was almost 25. We even had 3 places my parents liked to go for vacation and never really went anywhere else.

Holy hell - I’d start by addressing this! :eek:

Five hours on a good night? I’d be a total zombie inside of a week.

True on an immunomodulatory level, but vitamin C lozenges are still good to keep around for two reasons: One, they soothe sore throats just like any other candy-type lozenge will, and two, they’re great for “treating” illnesses about which you can honestly do nothing. You can take them by the bagful and pretend they’re medication, but you’d have to put forth some serious, concerted effort to OD. It makes you feel slightly less helpless.

I used to do almost the same thing with those bottles of low-dose aspirin. They’re only 81mg per tablet, because they’re meant for people with heart conditions to take as a tiny, daily blood-thinner, but the label tells you how many tablets equals a regulation pain-killing dose. I always felt very grimly efficacious, swatting down a tension headache by taking eight pills at a time. :smiley:

I used to get very ill (brochitis, pneumonia, vomiting, flu-like symptoms) 4-6x/year.

When I slept less than 6 hours a night.

Now I’m committed to getting 7-8 I’m healthy as a horse. Make your sleep count; don’t just lie there. I don’t know how many people have insomnia because they don’t follow common sense (don’t use the bed for anything but sex, sleep and reading a boring book to get you to sleep at night…don’t eat within 3 hours of bed…have room darkening shades…don’t watch late night tv…as soon as you’re drowsy turn out the lights, don’t stay up to “finish that chapter”…minimize caffeine…)

I don’t think the placebo effect works when you know it’s placebo.

Peace of mind is worth the 2.99 for Halls.

Like Surreal said, I noticed when I started taking a vitamin D3 supplement I didn’t get as many colds, and fewer colds turned into bronchitis. My brother noticed the same thing when he started using it.

Vitamin A and Zinc are also important to the immune system, along with tons of others I am sure.
Another thing to look into is probiotics, I don’t know how clear the science is on their ability to improve the immune system though. But it is something to look into.

Getting good sleep, eating a good diet, exercising and reducing stress also help with immunity (addressing those 4 factors help with virtually all health concerns).

Do you have young children in school? They are little germ cesspools, and they bring home every microbe they come in contact with in the classroom.

It was getting better for a while and then I got pregnant. There is nothing like being someone else’s house to make you unable to sleep! Now it is getting better again but only because I don’t work and I can nap with the baby during the day. If I had a full time job and a baby that woke me up three times a night I’d be so tired I would probably die.

I will look into all of this for sure!

No, my only child is an infant, but I’m glad to know I have that to look forward to in the future. :smack:

Another thing to look into is whey protein shakes. However I am having trouble finding studies on places like pubmed backing up some of the claims being made.