The common cold is something we often fall victim to at certain times of the year. Our bodies can get run down, and it only takes that one occasion where your body is struggling to fight off the bacteria, and you start getting the sniffles, a cough, or sore throat. It’s important to look after yourself all year round, and when you get a cold, it can be quite debilitating when you’re trying to work or just do your daily chores. Here are some tips to help avoid a common cold.
Wash Your Hands Often
Washing your hands is the most important thing to do when you’re out and about. Bacteria is everywhere, and it’s also something that you can pick up very easily if you’re not careful. With that in mind, it’s always good to try and wash your hands as regularly as you can. You should be washing your hands with a disinfectant, like soap and warm water. Make sure you’re lathering it up in your hands first before immediately running it under the tap. That’s only going to wash away the soap suds before you’ve even begun. Make sure you get in there, in between the fingers, the palms, and the backs of your hands. Washing your hands before eating a meal or snack is essential and try to do it several times a day, using hand cream to ensure your hands stay super soft and moisturized at the same time.
Look Out For Early Symptoms
There are early symptoms that you should be looking out for when it comes to a common cold. The most common is that run-down feeling that a lot of us can get and that isn’t usually fixable once you’ve got into that infected stage. If you are feeling a little under the weather, try to sleep it off and take some painkillers to see if that makes a difference. Otherwise, you might start to notice that you feel slightly warmer than usual. It’s a good idea to keep an eye on your temperature and to know what your body temperature should normally be at. When you’re temperature goes up, it often means that your body is fighting something and trying to kill it off. The early symptoms can help you to stop the cold progression to the full-blown flu. These baby congestion symptoms are handy to know for those youngest in the family.
Avoid Touching The Face
Bacteria are picked up everywhere and can be easily transferred from object to person and vice versa. The best thing you can do to avoid contaminating yourself with any cold is to avoid touching your face. When you are picking bacteria up on your hands, the first thing you tend to do is touch your face. Whether it’s to scratch an itch or whether you have a habit of touching a specific part of your face. It’s important to recognize when you do this normally and to try and kick the habit if possible. Sometimes, you might not even be aware that you’re doing it, but by then it’s too late. It’s worth having some hand sanitizer in your bag so that you can sanitize your hands if you know you’re not going to be touching anything in public and need to touch your face.
Keep Household Surfaces Sanitized
At home, the spread of bacteria once a member of the household had got it can be quite quick. If you’re sharing crockery and touching door handles and the banister of a staircase, for example, that common cold could soon be making its way around the home. As a way of making sure it doesn’t spread further, you should be keeping your household surfaces are fully sanitized. There’s plenty of products out there that are worth using around the home in order to keep everything clean and tidy. Wiping down kitchen surfaces and door handles on the daily can definitely help to keep bacteria levels down and to help with reducing the chances of you getting ill.
Use Tissues For Sneezing
Trying to control the bacteria, whether you’re inside or out in public is difficult either way. However, one of the big things that can help with reducing cross-contamination is to make sure you are using tissues for sneezing. A lot of people might simply sneeze into their hands and continue on with their day, contaminating other areas in such a short space of time. Sneezing into your elbow might be easier, but it’s certainly not going to be as effective as sneezing into a tissue. Having a pack of tissues on your person for those sudden sneezes can certainly help and you’ll be showing consideration from those around you if it ends up happening on public transport in a general public setting.
Maintain Healthy Eating Habits
It’s no surprise that what we eat can end up contributing to our overall health and wellbeing. It’s important to maintain a healthy diet, you want to be enjoying the food that you put into your mouth. That can sometimes be hard when you might not like everything that’s out there, or you haven’t expanded your palette to other cuisines and foods you’ve not tried before. With that being said, it’s a good idea to look at what you’re eating and how you could possibly make it healthier. Think about portion sizes and how much you eat per meal. It could be that you need to work on incorporating more vegetables or perhaps more fruit as snacks, rather than having something like chocolate to stave off your hunger. There are lots of changes that you can make and just being a little more open to trying new things, might help you reduce the chances of getting sick.
Get Plenty Of Sleep
Sleep is essential, and it’s something we’ll often sacrifice for getting up early for things or staying up late to watch that next episode of your favorite television series. However, it’s important you’re having several hours of sleep per night so that you’re feeling refreshed and ready to go. It can also help to repair your body and to recover from anything that might be attacking your immune system. That’s why when we’re ill, we’d usually try to get as much rest and sleep as possible, in order to feel better. Getting a good night’s rest is certainly needed, so try to get a good night’s sleep as often as possible.
Reduce Your Stress Levels
Reducing your stress levels can do a lot more than you think it can do when it comes to your immune system. If you’re working too hard at work and burning the candle at both ends at home and getting very little sleep, you’re going to get ill. It’s important to try and reduce your stress levels where you can in order to help feel better in yourself. A lot of ill-health conditions can come from stress, so there’s certainly a lot that you can do in both your personal and work life to help with your general wellbeing. Look at what’s causing stress in your life and what you can control. The more you can help yourself get less stressed out, the better.
Sometimes a common cold is inevitable, and there’s no stopping it. However, you should always be getting plenty of rest, drinking plenty of water and eating healthily in order to avoid or get rid of a cold. The more on top you stay when it comes to your health, the better.
No comments :
Post a Comment