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December 11, 2008

How Do Some People Not Get Sick?

It happens to me about every three years. I catch everything that comes through the door. When I was in college (the first time around) I would get sick at the end of every fall semester. This year must be one of my good years. Despite the tremendous stress of graduate school, I have not gotten a cold -- I say this as I knock wood and pray to the rhinovirus gods to overlook me.

Then I found this article on the secrets of how not to get sick, so I decided to see what I was doing right . . .
1) Exercise -- check: I started a running program back in February and kept it up until September. Planning to get back to that.
2) Oral hygiene -- check, sort of. The article suggests mouthwash, which I'm not in the habit of using.
3) Eat apples -- check: we discovered a great recipe for apple cake
4) Conquer stress -- buzz: I'm still working on how to figure this one out
5) Vitamins -- check: every morning with breakfast and I make sure to include milk
6) Mind power -- check: "I'm too busy to get sick"
7) Meditation -- buzz: unless you consider the mindless task of running a moving meditation
8) Socialize -- check: I have my husband, 38 classmates, and the faculty of the university, along with lexulous.com
9) Stay positive -- buzz: it's been hard to do with the stress, but I'm working on it
10) Wash your hands -- check: it's been drilled into us as part of the "sanitary precautions" we're learning in school
11) Get enough sleep -- ??: I try to keep a regular bedtime, but as I age, I'm finding that staying asleep is getting more difficult. Stress is part of the problem, but there may be a function of aging that actually reduces the amount of sleep we get in a night.

So, 7 out of 11 is not bad. It may be enough to tip the scales in my favor and keep me out of the ranks of coughers and the snifflers.

tags: massage massagetherapy wellness massage therapy bodywork health

Posted by linda at December 11, 2008 10:36 AM