Forget Gaza. Forget HIV. Forget global warming and the
recession, too.
It’s January. And that makes it time for the Western world to pipe
up about what we really see as the greatest challenge of our time—the
common cold. Or, more precisely: When are you bastard researchers going
to find a cure for this mo-fo?
Comedian Wanda Sykes did a funny bit at Montreal’s Just for Laughs
Comedy Fest (check youtube.com),
joking that the cures to all serious diseases were only stumbled across
by accident on the way to developing Viagra. Her answer for why there’s
no vaccine for the cold? It doesn’t have anything to do with the
penis.
Naturopathic doctor Sarah Baillie takes a different tack. No one’s
figured out a cure for the common cold, Baillie says, because the cold
is the cure.
What now?
“We’ve labelled it [that] you ‘get’ a cold. What you get is a
virus. And the cold is the response to it. It’s the body’s immune
system responding.”
Snot is mucus that traps germs before they go farther in. Sneezing
expels viruses from the nose. Fever makes the body inhospitable for
bugs. Fatigue is a way of forcing people to take it easy.
And, you know, I can wrap my head around all that. I’ve written in
this space before about how much better it would be for all of us if we
just learned to accept the occasional cold. If we admitted happy defeat
and holed up in bed with an Arrested Development box set, a box
of tissues, a jug of water and an attentive caregiver bringing
alternating doses of hot buttered toast and soup.
Baillie says there’s even more to cold recovery than going to bed. A
cold generally lasts three to five days, if you’re in pretty good
health when the virus gets its toe-hold. But, she says, if it hits when
you’ve been eating poorly or have a history of eating poorly (“too much
sugar, for example, too much alcohol, too much caffeine, not enough
anti-oxidants such as vegetables, not enough protein—protein is the
backbone of the immune system—and too many carbohydrates) or “if
you’re entering that cold from a place of deficiency—exhaustion,
stress, burn-out or even just tired” it takes longer to get better.
“I don’t know if the symptoms would be worse,” she says, “but they
will linger.”
OK. So here’s my question: What about when your cold goes away but
one little nagging symptom hangs around like the last guy at the
cocktail-party shrimp ring?
I mean, let’s say you’re up. You’re about. You’re right as rain,
really. Except for the honking cough following you around like the
smell of frying fish on a wool sweater. Or, let’s say, the fluid that’s
crept into your ear and won’t go away—a fluid that’s robbed you of
half your hearing, sets you off-balance and makes you feel like you’ve
thrown back four Tanqueray and tonics for breakfast every morning for
two weeks. (Can you tell I’m speaking from experience here? See, my
annual over-Christmas cold has come and gone. But the fluid in my ear
has hooked up his satellite cable and a password-protected wireless
connection and settled in for the long haul. If you see me on the
street approach with caution: I may fall over at any moment).
Why? Why? WHY won’t it go away? And why is it so frustrating? I’m
talking beyond the physical inconvenience of a lingering cough,
loitering ear fluid or those last seemingly never-ending post-nasal
dripdripdrips. It’s difficult not to take them personally. You start to
feel those hanging-on symptoms are colonizing your body out of
spite.
The frustration, of course, is cultural.
Society’s “productivity mantra,” Baillie says, “doesn’t give you
much longer than a day-and-a-half to get well again.” And even in a
best-case scenario—where you’re healthy to begin with and you listen
to what your body is telling you and head directly to bed—that’s not
long enough to bounce back.
The lesson? Remember who’s in charge.
“These viruses are smarter than we are,” says Baillie. “They are
stronger and smarter. When we become immune to them, they just
mutate.”
Idiot humans can’t manage such adaptability.
So, I guess if you can’t beat ’em? Join ’em. Preferably in bed, with
an Arrested Development box set, satellite TV and a solid
wireless connection.
Send chicken soup and bad romance novels to Lezlie
Lowe at lezliel@thecoast.ca.
This article appears in Jan 15-21, 2009.