no one likes to be sick and in the age of covert this hits home more than ever the
moment you get a cough or fever you have to wonder if it's just a cold or something worse
and even if it's not a devastating illness if you're sick with anything you're going
to be dealing with symptoms that make your life miserable even if only for a few days
so when that happens try to take some comfort in knowing that as awful as you
feel each one of those symptoms is doing a job and trying to help you in some way
number 10 vomiting emitopovia is the technical term for fear of vomiting and a surprising
number of people suffer from it though in a severe form it's rare in general as much
as 8.8 of the population has at least a mild fear of throwing up it's not hard to understand either
since vomiting is not all that enjoyable so why does it have to happen at all well from a very
basic standpoint it seems clear that you vomit because your insides want something outside and
they can't wait and that's exactly what's happening something has triggered your
digestive system to suggest you ingested something bad a toxin a poison something that
is a severe irritant and your body no longer wants it around there are mechanical reasons
for vomiting as well such as conditions that affect the nerves and muscles in your stomach or
even stress but that's a different issue as a symptom of an underlying virus or infection
vomiting is your body's way of trying to speed your recovery by forcing the thing making you
sick right back out 9. shivering with many illnesses you'll find yourself running between
temperature extremes one minute you're cold and the next you're hot and while a fever has its
own purpose which we'll mention shortly what's the point of feeling cold and shivering shivering when
you're sick and feeling cold is essentially stage one of a two-stage process the second part often
leads to a fever but they need to go hand in hand your body wants to heat up to fight off infection
but it can't do that out of nowhere you need to make the heat somehow and that's what shivering's
for your muscles begin contracting and relaxing rapidly that physical process creates heat once
your body has reached a high enough temperature the shivering stops and a fever sets in number
8. fever the process by which fever works in your body is not something most people consider you get
sick sometimes you get a fever on a deeper level many of us understand this increase in temperature
is your body's way of trying to fight off an illness but how fevers can be triggered by a
number of illnesses be they infections or viruses and more your body is reacting to something it
understands is undesirable by producing white blood cells in greater abundance these white
blood cells stimulate your hypothalamus which is what generally keeps your body in balance
one of the things it maintains is temperature in simple terms it turns up your internal thermostat
so you get hotter than normal as blood vessels contract your blood goes away from the outside
of your body to the inside your shiver producing more heat and your body warms up most viruses
and bacteria function in a host body at a stable temperature they can only handle so much variation
your immune system forces your temperature to rise in an effort to kill off as much of the invading
pathogen as possible and return you to good health the role of course is that a fever that goes too
high can be a danger all on its own 7. runny nose when you're sick everything in your body seeks to
get the cause of the sickness out and more often than not it can only do that in a gross way in
the case of a runny nose your body needs to amp up mucous production in the hope that whatever
infectious thing is inside you gets stuck and oozes out with something like a cold the pathogen
making you sick manage to get past the mucous lining in your body which is a natural filter your
body responds by making something called cytokines which are proteins that can move between cells and
send signals throughout your body in this case they signal your immune system to increase mucus
production excess mucus is used to clean the mucous lining and flush out any contaminants or
pathogens that may have infected it it's like your body trying to power wash itself from the inside
basically without this excess mucus production you would be more inclined to either stay sick
or get sicker number six coughing and sneezing the dreaded cough is one of the first and most notable
signs of a myriad of conditions that plague us especially during the winter cold and flu season
are the cough's natural habitat like vomiting coughing is a reflex action your body takes when
it senses something that it doesn't want inside of it unlike vomiting is a little less picky about
how it operates basically anything that irritates your breathing is going to cause coughing that's
why a cold makes you cough but so does smoking or getting a nose full of pepper by accident your
body has sent something that doesn't belong in it and it's trying to force it out with a blast of
air that can actually propel things outwards at up to 50 miles per hour sneezing performs essentially
the same function as we just saw mucus production is a byproduct of many illnesses so in those cases
coughing is a complementary action that helps clear those airways to ensure that you can keep
breathing on the other hand various proteins in our immune response can cause inflammation in
our throats and airways as a method of combating infection or viruses a byproduct of this is also a
cough since your airway is inflamed cough itself may not be eliminating anything in those cases
in general both a cough and a sneeze are working to remove pathogens from your airways number five
sore throat sword tends to come along with a cough a fever and excess mucus a sore throat something
like a chronic cough can exacerbate a sore throat and make it feel worse but it's not typically
the root cause of a sore throat that's actually something we just mentioned when dealing with
coughs inflammation you can think of inflammation as similar to a localized fever the places in
your body that become inflamed when you're sick get red they swell and they warm up
your body is trying to fight off something in that specific location where inflammation
has occurred many of us think inflammation is caused by what's wrong with us but technically
it's your body trying to fix what's wrong with you the inflammation triggers the production of white
blood cells that go to the inflammation side to combat whatever infection is plaguing you when the
white blood cells and the antibodies reach the site of the swelling they put pressure on nerve
endings these two things together create the feeling of your throat being thick and swollen
as well as in pain uncomfortable though it may be it's a sign your body is working as it should be
to fight off the illness number four loss of appetite getting sick often means losing your
desire to do almost anything while you may not be in the mood to physically run around and do things
even necessary biological imperatives like eating can take a back seat loss of appetite is a very
common symptom of many conditions blame the cytokines again for this one as the suppression
of appetite is a method your body uses to focus on healing digesting food can take as much as 15
of the energy your body expends in a day when you don't eat that energy can be used instead to help
fight off the illness that you're battling the other potential reason is that if
you're vomiting because you're sick with an infection that is giving you stomach issues
it's pretty clear you don't want or need to be putting more food inside yourself at that
moment so your body's holding off on the desire to eat until you're physically able to do so
number three pus pass is probably one of the most unpleasant substances made in the human
body it's thick and sometimes it can smell just awful it's also a prime indicator of a seriously
bad infection but it's not just the infection itself it's your body's response to an infection
as off-putting as it may be if you don't have the ability to produce pus then you'd probably be in
a pretty bad way when you have an infection pus builds up around it it's just white blood cells
looking to eliminate the infection problem arises when the infection is worse than your immune
system can handle for instance a foreign body can't really be destroyed by white blood cells so
an infection will grow likewise an abscess may only get larger as tissue dies and the
infection grows bigger than your immune system can manage consider however that if you couldn't
produce past then your first line of defense against infection wouldn't exist and eventually
a small skin infection could potentially become deadly number two drowsiness for many of us
getting sick means spending the day in bed even when you go to the hospital they put you in a bed
it's probably the most prescribed treatment in the world for nearly every conceivable condition
so the fact that getting sick often makes you drowsy makes a lot of sense sleep is necessary
for life even if we don't fully understand the mechanisms of everything that happens when you're
out for the night but we do know that it allows your body to take the time to repair itself from
damage when sick sleeping is especially beneficial since you're not wasting time on waking endeavors
everything from digesting to thinking to moving takes energy your body could be using to heal
when you're awake you're just more efficient at healing when you're asleep research has shown that
in worms certain nerve cells release neuropeptides when they're ill these neuropeptides stamp down
the nervous system and make the worms fall asleep so that they can heal it's been speculated a
similar process is occurring in humans as well number one sickness behavior sickness behavior
may sound like a vague term but it kind of has to be it's a blanket term for that hard to describe
feeling when you know you're sick it's everything we already described and then how you deal with it
when you experience it you feel slow and gross and tired and weary it doesn't matter
which sickness you have sickness behavior is how you personally deal with it cytokines and
other proteins are at the root of your sickness behavior the suite of awful symptoms you feel when
you're ill and while some of the individual things have functions which we've covered the
overall feeling of awfulness seems to exist as a measure of preservation and isolation you feel
awful to keep yourself from getting up and doing anything else a sort of self-quarantine really you
stop the spread of illness to others you stop the strain on yourself and you just focus on recovery