How not to get sick in the fall: doctor’s advice

After the first warm fruit­ful months of autumn comes Novem­ber. Day­light hours are short­en­ing, the sky is cov­ered with gray clouds, and per­for­mance is declin­ing.

What can I do to keep my for­mer work­ing capac­i­ty and pos­i­tive mood? We asked for advice Christi­na Bashukther­a­pist and doc­tor of func­tion­al diag­nos­tics.

Mandatory medical examination

Autumn is a peri­od of exac­er­ba­tion of many chron­ic dis­eases, such as stom­ach and duo­de­nal ulcers, arthri­tis, coro­nary heart dis­ease, chron­ic obstruc­tive pul­monary dis­ease, dis­eases of the gen­i­touri­nary, ner­vous sys­tem, etc. There­fore, if you feel worse, do not delay vis­it­ing a doc­tor. Once a year, it is rec­om­mend­ed to under­go a com­pre­hen­sive check-up of your body in order to iden­ti­fy pos­si­ble prob­lems at the ear­li­est stages.

The required min­i­mum includes:

• gen­er­al analy­sis of blood and urine,
• bio­chem­i­cal blood test (renal, liv­er tests, lipid pro­file, elec­trolytes),
• chest x‑ray,
• Ultra­sound of the heart, abdom­i­nal organs and kid­neys,
• for women — exam­i­na­tion by a gyne­col­o­gist, for men — by a urol­o­gist.

Remem­ber: the best treat­ment is pre­ven­tion.

Vaccination

If there are no con­traindi­ca­tions, get a flu shot. At the height of the sea­son (end of Novem­ber — Decem­ber), vac­ci­na­tion will not be as effec­tive, since it will take about 2 weeks for the body to form an immune response.

You need to get vac­ci­nat­ed against the flu every year. The need for this lies in the con­stant vari­abil­i­ty of the virus. WHO rec­om­mends first of all to vac­ci­nate:

• young chil­dren,
• old peo­ple,
• preg­nant women,
• peo­ple with chron­ic dis­eases.

This cat­e­go­ry is more at risk of com­pli­ca­tions such as pneu­mo­nia, myocardi­tis, encephalopa­thy, liv­er and ner­vous sys­tem patholo­gies, and oth­ers.

Balanced diet

Include more veg­eta­bles, fruits, greens, eggs, meat prod­ucts, fat­ty fish in your diet to pre­vent ane­mia, as well as hypovi­t­a­minosis. For those who did not have time in the sum­mer — now is the last oppor­tu­ni­ty to pre­pare veg­eta­bles, fruits and berries for the win­ter.

It is bet­ter to give pref­er­ence to freez­ing rather than con­ser­va­tion, which will keep the vit­a­min and min­er­al com­po­si­tion of the prod­ucts prac­ti­cal­ly unchanged.

And how nice it is to treat home­made deli­cious sea buck­thorn tea. A hand­ful of frozen berries, a piece of gin­ger, orange, mint, pour boil­ing water, add sug­ar to taste. A real cock­tail of vit­a­mins C, B, PP, A, E, phos­pho­rus, mag­ne­sium, cal­ci­um and oth­er nutri­ents. Besides very tasty.

Physical activity

WHO rec­om­mends that adults aged 18 to 64 should do at least 150 min­utes of mod­er­ate-inten­si­ty aer­o­bic exer­cise per week. A great excuse to get out a cou­ple of stops ear­ly or final­ly sign up for a gym or pool.

Speak­ing of pools. Many peo­ple dur­ing the flu sea­son try to avoid vis­it­ing it. How­ev­er, dis­in­fect­ed pool water is detri­men­tal to most microbes and virus­es. The main dan­ger lies in the lock­er rooms and oth­er com­mon areas. So from the point of view of epi­demi­ol­o­gy, vis­it­ing the pool is not more dan­ger­ous than vis­it­ing a super­mar­ket or trav­el­ing by pub­lic trans­port.

Healthy sleep

Lack of sleep and, as a result, a defi­cien­cy of mela­tonin (a pineal gland hor­mone pro­duced at night) can lead to a decrease in immu­ni­ty. Before going to bed, ven­ti­late the room well and turn off the heater: the rec­om­mend­ed air tem­per­a­ture in the bed­room is 18–20 ° C.

An hour before you go into the arms of Mor­pheus, put your gad­gets aside. Blue radi­a­tion from screens affects cir­ca­di­an rhythms, pro­vokes headaches and insom­nia.

Fruit flies exposed to blue light had reti­nal dam­age and lived short­er lives than fruit flies kept in dark­ness or nat­ur­al light, accord­ing to a study by sci­en­tists at Ore­gon State Uni­ver­si­ty. The results of the study were pub­lished in the jour­nal Aging and Mech­a­nisms of Dis­ease.

And to make wak­ing up easy, install a sleep track­er on your smart­phone (for exam­ple, Sleep cycle, Good Morn­ing, Sleep Time). The appli­ca­tion tracks the phas­es of sleep and wakes you up at the most opti­mal peri­od in the “win­dow” 30 min­utes before the alarm. You are cheer­ful and ready to con­quer the world!

Dress for the weather

Fur hats and heavy sheep­skin coats are becom­ing a thing of the past and are being replaced by light, eco-friend­ly and hypoal­ler­genic mate­ri­als. Sin­tepon, tin­su­late, fib­ertec, holofiber … The choice is huge, and the advan­tages are obvi­ous. Cloth­ing with syn­thet­ic fillers does not get mites, it keeps its shape well, it can be washed in a wash­ing machine and it can with­stand low tem­per­a­tures (even down to ‑30°C).

Safety regulations

Avoid crowd­ed places and wash your hands more often (required with soap and for at least 30 sec­onds.) If there is no watch at hand, sing “Hap­py Birth­day”. Or “Cher­vona Ruta”. It’s already a mat­ter of taste.

Also, smile and laugh more often. It is not only beau­ti­ful, but also good for health. Laugh­ter not only improves mood and reduces anx­i­ety lev­els, but is also a great work­out for the car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem. Be healthy!