I mean sick in the virus/cold/flu/whatever sickness.
It seems to me that when I’m really, really sick - I have been on the mend in relatively short time - 24-48 hours.
However, if something strikes me with similar symptoms, but much more mild - I seem to be afflicted for more like 4-5 days.
It’s kinda like with a mild sickness, the immune system does the equivalent of walking a patrol and when it sees something suspect, only questions the perp and maybe handcuffs him and brings him into the station. However, with a real hardcore sickness, those same immune system patrols are armed with night vision scopes, RPG’s, assault rifles, C4 and laser guided missiles - and they shoot first and ask questions later.
Is it just me? Does this happen with anyone else? Is there a reason?
Maybe with the serious stuff, those “germs” are also the ones more easily identified by the immune system. Kinda like those suspicious looking outsiders/thieves/rapists wandering your suburb vs the neighbor who steals your morning paper.
Or maybe, you just felt SO darn bad that some improvement made a dramatic difference?
Well, it seems that when you get a fever, a real serious not-fucking-around fever (not one of those “get hot in the evening during your week-long cold” ones) you only get it for a few hours and then it “breaks” and you feel a million times better, regardless of your other symptoms. Maybe that’s part of it?
It’s possible that you only feel better with regards to the extra shitty you felt. You don’t fell 100%, but you don’t really notice since it’s better than you were before. If you only feel mildly bad in the first place you’re aware of it the whole time since you’re comparing it to feeling good and not feeling bad.
There are several reasons, and any of them could apply at a given time.
First, more aggressive illnesses tend to be fought off more strongly.
But second, it’s when you feel worse that you are already getting better for many illnesses. The “feeling crappy” is the result of your own body’s defenses (and many psychobiologists think it’s a deliberate signal to get down, stay warm, and get some rest away from anyone else), or in the case of bacterial infections, them dying and releasing the toxins inside. Once that clears up, you are going to feel a lot better.
Maybe this? When I get a mild cold, that’s only really accompanied by sniffles and/or stuffy nose and a sore throat and maybe some tiredness, it takes a while to go away completely. Like maybe the tired feeling will go, then no more throat, but I’ve still got an annoying runny nose. Whereas if I feel super shitty, I associate the sickness with…well, that tired, don’t want to go anywhere feeling, and then when that breaks, it’s all sunshine, even if I’m not totally better.
I suppose there could definately be a ‘relative’ factor involved.
Smiling Bandit - is that definately true that more aggressive illnesses tend to be fought more strongly? It certainly seems it to me - but I’m uneducated about such things.
Qadgop - to be fair, I have not been really, really sick. At least, not in a LONG time. Apparently when I was 1 yr old, I had a very bad fever, and my parents had to put me in the bathtub with some ice (or something). I guess my heart also stopped and my dad gave me CPR. But other than that - no, never really, really sick. I did have a little bit of a scare a couple years ago when my fever got to 103. But a trip to the ER for some antibiotics and that was all better. Didn’t require months (:eek:) to recover.
Remember that time a few years ago when flu vaccine ran out and at the same time there was a particularly nasty influenza going around? What was that, around 2003 or so?
I caught that flu. I was really, really sick. I was out of work for four days and really needed to take even more time off. There were times that I truly thought I was dying, I was so sick. It was two months before I even approached feeling well again.
So, at least as far as this illness went, the theory doesn’t hold up. That flu was a bastard both in intensity and in duration.
Do you go for complete bed rest when “realy sick” and do the “walking wounded” thing when mildly ill? (and I agree with QtM that you likely haven’t been REALLY sick, I think we are talking about varyuing degress of a flu, right?)
Sleep really effects the time you are ill for many things, like the flu. I’ll see if I can find the study but it’s something like two hours+ of illness/recovery time knocked off for every extra hour of sleep(over 7 hours) and the same added if you get less sleep.
If you spent two days on your ass in bed for 12 hours, as opposed to 4 days getting only 5-6 hours of sleep, that would make a huge difference.
Here’s what I do- at the first sign of a flu/cold/etc, I take a day off, take plenty of immune boosters (some of which may be partially placebos, but I take zinc, vit C, echineaia, and probiotics) and make sure I get 12 hours of sleep and lots of rest the rest of the day.
Those OTC symptom supressor “cold medicines” that allude it’s just fine to take their drugs then go about your day are just selling more of the drug- you’ll be sick longer and you’ll spread the disease.:mad:
It depends on the illness, but yes to a degree. The bigger shock to your body, the more response it floods you with. If the illness keeps things slow and small, it’s less likely to trigger a full-out “war”. But everybody is different and every infection is different.
What DrDeth describes matches my own anecdotal evidence. I have mostly worked from home over the years, so it was easy enough to try to work when sick if I wanted to. My experience has generally been that taking a day off to rest and recover means I lose one day and am at 100% the rest of the week, but trying to keep working means I’m at 50% capacity the whole week.
My wife rolls her eyes at me when I tell her ‘no, I dont want to take drugs - I’d rather just lie in bed, suffer for the day, and sweat it out!’
It always seemed to me that if I was suppressing symptoms (muscle achi-ness, etc) that my body would just go along thinking ‘eh, something else is taking care of bid-ness - so I ain’t gonna do jack!’
And as far as placebo effect - hey, whatever works.
I have been sick all week (thus the reason for this thread), and I took monday and half of tuesday off work. I have rarely taken sick days because I rarely get sick for more than a 2-3 days. Finally yesterday morning, when I was debating whether to call in sick again with overall tiredness, I decided I was done being sick. And wouldn’t ya know, no more overall tired-ness.
Still have the sore throat though. But I’m done with that at this point too. Just decided that just now.
