20 Terrible Things To Do When Sick (3 of 4)

Never Washing Your Hands

Think what you want about hand sanitizing, but at the very least wash your hands as much as possible. According to the NHS, 40 percent of all rhinovirus strains – the stuff that cause common cold – will stay on our hands after one hour has passed. For flu virus it’s a shorter lifespan – roughly 15 minutes. Even with this in mind, it’s still smart to be washing hands, as it’ll save you from transferring the virus over to various surfaces throughout your home.

Taking Too Much Medicine

There is a pill out there to fix practically  anything, but sometimes people go overboard on those remedies. There have been cases where people have overdosed on medicine for common colds and flu and it goes to show that the over-the-counter medication can be as deadly as those you have to get through doctors notes.

Why is that? Because of the particular ingredients in these medications. Take acetaminophen found in NyQuil and Tylenol. In small doses it’ll be fine, but an excess can damage and even destroy your liver. So make sure you follow the instructions specifically on the bottle. They’re there for a reason.

Taking Unprescribed Antibiotics

You also don’t want to go overboard on antibiotics. In fact, never take them unless they have been prescribed to you. The thing about antibiotics is that they fight off bad bacteria in the body.

But isn’t the common cold – a bad bacteria? No.

A common cold and other common illnesses stem from viruses. So antibiotics – even when prescribed to you – will do nothing in fighting off these common illnesses.

Not only that, but taking a lot of them will also boost antibiotic resistance. Remember that antibiotics is the process of physically ingesting bacteria into our body to fight off threats. If our body builds up resistances, it’ll fight off the bacteria from those antibiotics like it would do with anything else. This is bad, especially when you get an infection that’ll resist antibiotics.

Taking A Trip

Whether you are flying somewhere or going on a road trip, this should be the last thing on your mind when you get sick. Not only is going someplace further away is generally bad for your health, but a 2018 study uncovered that germs on airplanes can spread pretty quickly. The study found that sitting next to a sick person on a plane boosts your chances of getting their illness by 80 percent.

So instead of going out and travelling, do everyone a favour and postpone your trip.

Going To Work

Similarly, going to work is pretty bad when you have the flu or have a cold. The CDC found that when a person is sick and is within a six-foot radius to others, those people can catch that illnesses whenever the sick individual coughs or sneezes.

It’s smarter to find a way to work from home if you really need to. It’s either that or staying at home and resting up a lot until you are certain what you have isn’t going to be contagious any longer.