Week 13: Infectious Conditions

Infectious conditions were the topic for this weeks reading, and the big message here, is mindfulness. I preach mindfulness in my everyday life, so I was immediately interesting in the reading. We start off with learning our body’s defenses, and factors that play into causing and preventing disease and infection. For example, for a disease to occur, one must be susceptible.

The good thing about all these is that your body is constantly working to protect you. How? Well, your skin is a natural barrier from many environmental factors- that, doubled up with our immune system working double time producing antibodies to keep any un-wanted antigens from getting us sick too.

While we can’t control everything, there are definitely steps we can take to help prevent against all these risks factors. For starters, making sure we are washing our hands is on the top of my list, to further, things you can’t control would be heredity, aging, and environmental conditions which seems more inevitable than most.

Something we should all be mindful of, are viral infections. These viruses consist of, but are not limited to, hepatitis, herpes, measles and rubella. They are seemingly difficult to treat due to their ability to withstand heat, formaldehyde, and radiation. There are vaccinations for such viruses, but everyone has the option to opt out, for whatever reason one may have.

Currently, I have a cold, and it is pretty common among the population to have it. It’s the most irritating thing to deal with when school and work are consuming your every move, so as much as my doctor and I want me to rest, I got work to do. The flu, something I find most people mix up, has much harsher symptoms than what we know to be the flu- make sure to look out for signs of aches and pains, fever and overall body discomfort. Conversely, your common cold is just going to be a pain, as it is all about congestion, sneezing, coughing and less often, fatigue.

Lets all make a combined effort to keep in mindful all these preventable factors, if any and every aspect of the word- lets make sure we are washing our hands, and eating good; lets make a hard effort to know who we are partnering with, and we are keeping educated on safe sex, being self aware, and aware of your surroundings as well.

This week, my goals are less on point than they were the week before. Me not feeling so good has really been a damper on my progress. I have been unable to work out, but I have managed to stick to my healthy eating. This weekend I was able to make honey-balsamic glazed brussel sprouts with garlic, and it was really good. I’m excited to add this to my meal prepping plan in the near future! Has anyone else been noticing big changes within themselves?

Also, juicing anyone? I’m getting plenty of vitamin C and folate to keep me healthy and pumped from some pressed juices I’ve been getting into, this week I had a couple of beet, spinach, ginger and lemon juices and they were pretty interesting to say the least. I’m certainly not huffing and puffing when I am going up the stairs, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are no words to put into place how my body feels and the energy I have from eating better.