20 Terrible Things To Do When Sick

We all feel under the weather once in a while and for many of us the remedy can turn to resorting to junk food, staying up, and doing nothing to deal with our illness. As suggested, this isn’t the brightest thing to do if your plan is to recover. Not only that, but there are plenty of other things as well that aren’t wise to do as well.

Below is a short list of “remedies” that make matters worse for you.

OD On Vitamin C

While all of us know vitamin C boosts and supports our immune system, we can sometimes go overboard on it. Remember that our body stores nutrients pretty well and while various vitamins help, too much can cause problems. In the case of vitamin C, you can relieve yourself of illness in short term, but in the long term it can have adverse effects on you.

Take a study from 2013 for example. Published in JAMA Internal Medicine, the study found that those who boosted their intake of vitamin C were more likely to develop kidney stones. So while oranges are great, too many can cause problems.

Consuming Alcohol

While some turn to vitamin C, others will turn to the bottle to find their remedy. But before you start thinking of sipping on wine all day is going to help, it’s worth looking at what Carolyn Dean, MD has to say. In the book The Complete Natural Medicine Guide to Women’s Health, the co-author, Dean, suggests that alcohol won’t do much good.

Why?

Because alcohol requires magnesium in order for it to be metabolized. In other words, alcohol will prompt our body to make more insulin – creating a surge of it – while depleting any immune-boosting mineral in our body.

Letting Stress Levels Get Too High

While physical health is on the decline when sick, you don’t want your mental health to slip down either. One study in 2016 found that psychological stress has been implicated in altered immune functioning in many diseases.

In other words, those who suffered from stress issues and weren’t as mentally strong were more likely to get sick and deal with their illnesses longer than those with stronger mental health.

Missing Sleep

You don’t need me to tell you all the time that sleep is important. There have been several studies over the years stressing how important it all is. Sleep is especially important when it comes to illnesses, as sleeping is the main way your body is fighting off any disease or infection.

Not only that, but it’s important to keep up sleep even when you are not sick, as sleeping is used to boost your immune system and to maintain it too as some studies have found.

Not Staying Hydrated

Instead, the liquid of choice to be looking at out of all mentioned is water. Not all fluids are created equal and that much is obvious when you consider water being so helpful in all kinds of situations.

Out of all the liquids to keep an eye on, the most important is clean water. Soft drinks, fruit juices, as well as other sugar-sweetened beverages do little and actually make matters worse. We know this because clean water naturally flushes our system out. In other words it can easily flush out bad germs over time.