Fever, Fear, and Riding a Bicycle: Working with Fever in a Different Way
This article was originally published in Lilipoh Magazine, Issue #97, Fall 2019
We lose part of our sense of control when we get sick, and no one likes that feeling. Loss of control brings fear. Illness is always a little scary because there is implicit risk of loss and incapacity and so we (appropriately) fear lasting injury. Another part of the fear we experience with illness comes not so much from injury, but from simply not quite knowing what is going to happen. Usually illness is mild, but what if it becomes life-threatening, and how are we supposed to know which illness is mild and which is dangerous? Getting professional medical advice aids in that determination, but even the medical encounter itself can bring its own set of worries—we must trust in the advice of medical providers even when we may not fully understand their decision-making process, or worse yet, not even be invited to participate in it. There are reasons to be fearful around illness on multiple levels.
Stomach Flu, Probiotics and Digesting the World
Here are three paragraphs about supporting and strengthening your digestion:
When you have an acute gastroenteritis (more commonly know as the stomach “flu”), a simple, but very helpful trick:
If you get a stomach virus—the kind that quickly goes around schools and workplaces and causes multiple episodes of vomiting—it is very easy to get dehydrated. This makes you incredibly thirsty, so then once you have a break in the vomiting it feels good to gulp down a bunch of liquid. The trouble is that usually the stomach is swollen and irritated because of the virus, and when you gulp a bunch of water it stretches the swollen stomach, which makes you vomit again. This can become a vicious cycle–vomit, gulp, vomit, repeat. So here’s a recommendation:
Strengthening our Vitality During Cold and Flu Season
This winter has been tough, with a lot of people experiencing a wide variety of colds, flu, bronchitis, you name it! One method to try to avoid getting sick is to stay away from anyone that is sick (which unless you are a hermit in a cave is pretty challenging). A different approach is to say: well, when I get sick my body makes me do certain things, and one of them is to slow down. Indeed, having to lie in bed for a week is an effective way to slow down, but one that most of us would rather avoid. We can influence our health by remembering that very many people find they get sick when they have been over-extending themselves—trying to cram in too much into too little time. They have gotten “toxic” (think of work deadlines, studying for final exams, travel with disrupted sleep and eating rhythms). And a process of inflammation makes us slow down and simplify (whether we want to or not), and cleanses the body.