Free tip about the Flu

[strogg]

Good point. What I believe is the flu when I get it is the following:

5+ days of knock-me-out symptoms where I'm asleep 16 hours a day
full body aches
2+ days of horrible fever
> 2 week recovery time

If that's not the flu, then I've never gotten the flu in my life.

I'll start exercising again in March when the flu season is over. Haha.

[C-dub]

It could've been the flu. You're still young and many in your age range can recover even without medical treatment. It would be difficult, but not impossible.

[Bitter Clinger]

Sometimes I get the flu with the shot. Sometimes I don't. If I don't get the shot, sometimes I get the flu, sometimes I don't. I don't see a correlation. With that in mind, I'm not going to say the flu shot helps or it doesn't, but I have noticed one very odd observation about myself. If I exercise in the wintertime, I will absolutely come down with something nasty. Otherwise, I won't. I kid you not. I used to exercise all the time in high school. I never failed to catch the flu every year. I stopped for a few years in college. Never got sick. I started up again for my health's sake. I got the flu within 2 months. I stopped due to laziness. No more flu. Started up again. Flu. So on and so forth. Catch the pattern? My guess is that exercising and recovery is keeping my body busy from doing other things like keeping germs from multiplying. It makes sense, right? Others with more knowledge, please chime in. I'm curious if this is merely some odd correlation without true causation.

I have not been sick since I stopped exercising. My theory was either exercise wears you down and makes you more tired / suseptible, or maybe it was simply exposure to all the stuff in the air in the gym. People huffing & puffing, spreading germs, touching surfaces with sweaty hands, etc. Just a giant human petrie dish!

[JustSomeOldGuy]

what they don't really explain well, because it doesn't sell well, is that the flu shot isn't about individual immunity, it's about herd immunity. So when you get a flu shot, you're not really doing it for you.....

[C-dub]