JOSH'S CONDITIONS & TREATMENTS BLOG

Flu Season Descends Upon Us Like A Sickly Crow

CNN, Dr. Priya Sampathkumar of the Mayo Clinic and others have released a NEW! list of do's and don'ts to do or don't do during flu season. The serious list can be found at CNN.com. For those of you feeling saucy and adventurous, the abridged, heavily-edited and heavily-editorialized list can be found below:

1. Don't sneeze into your hands. The sneeze will put germs on your hands. The hands will put germs on the people you love. The people you love will get the flu. It's like a tragic, but lame Greek play.
2. Keep your hands clean. (Apparently, this is where things get groundbreaking.)
3. Don't overload on vitamins.  We all know that getting sick is a fun excuse to shop at the faintly-depressing pharmaceutical stores where plays the soulless Muzak, but it might be better to stick to condensed soup, orange juice and bed rest. "One multivitamin a day, tops" says Sampathkumar.
4. Don't exercise too much when you are sick. I think that I speak for a lot of us when I say that I don't exercise too much when I am healthy.
5. Limit your cold medication intake. It is fun to drink a bottle of liquid cold relief, but maybe you shouldn't?
6. Eat what feels good. Keeping up your strength up is whats really important. Let a the flu be an excuse to do what ever you want, gormandizzily.
7. Don't smoke. They have to throw that one in. It's like a law or something.

If you have the flu, you could see an Infectious Disease Specialist, because, man, that sure is a cool-sounding title. You're probably fine with your Family Physician or Internist.  To find medical services near you, click here.

"Americans Not Obessive-Compulsive Enough," Claim Soap Companies

In a non-biased study that was sponsored by the Soap and Detergent Association, only about one third of the men are washing up after they use the restroom. Women wash up 88 times out of 100. This information was gathered by researchers who slunk around public lavatories and investigated people's habits. (Insert Larry Craig joke here)

  Then the scientists ran to a panel of infectious disease specialists and told on the American public. "Buy soap," these independent scientists added. Judy Daly, the project leader, even suggested that people carry around some sanitizing gel in case there was no soap to be found.

"These are a marvelous addition to plain soap and water," she said. "Using soap will make you sexy and strong," were the mysteriously quotation-marked words at the beginning of this sentence.

Cleanliness is important. It keeps typhoid out of the food supply. It keeps disease-ridden rat/flea combos from depopulating Europe, and it even makes people smell nice. It also lowers the rate of flu and infections.

So why am I making fun of this study?

Men, in general, tend to urinate standing up. There is no man-to-porcelain contact. There is no risk of catching germs or spreading bacteria from that particular exchange. As a man, I would venture to guess that we use the urinal two out of three visits to the boy's room.

Urine, gross as it is, contains toxins, but it is sterile.  If a man were to have what is known as "poor aim," then pre-existing bacteria on the skin could use the urine as a medium for growth.

But that man would already have that bacteria on his skin before he went to the bathroom. Should he have washed up before he went to the bathroom?  So how clean do you need to be at all times and are there any health risks to being so clean?

Some scientists believe that overcleanliness is linked to allergies. Allergies are caused by an overreactive or "bored" immune system. The clean person is so microbe free that the immune system is given nothing to do. The immune system attacks anything that it enters the body that shouldn't be there: Dander, Pollen, Smoke, Homework and Peanuts.

So the next time the soap companies tell you that you need to be cleaner, tell them where they can stick the soap. (In their mouthes to wash out the lies.)

If you want to talk to an allergist about allergies or an infectious disease specialist about infectious disease, click here.