From Sickness to Health

When Life Gives You A Cold, It Sucks. 

I hate getting sick. It really sucks no matter if you have a little cold or the full blown flu. Your head pounds, you can't breathe, your throat hurts, you're freezing, you're too hot, etc. You just feel like death, then you take a bunch of medicine, and you get over it and feel good as new again. At least until the next time you get sick.

I've come to realize that every time I get sick, I kind of have an established routine for how I try to make myself better. Besides taking medicine (only when I really need it), I have a few essentials that I swear help me get well again. But I'm no doctor, so warning: it's probably just all a placebo effect.

1. Wearing comfy lounging clothes.

Nobody likes dressing up when they're sick. I pick my outfits everyday based on my mood in the mornings. So when I'm feeling sick (or just lazy), all I want to wear are fuzzy socks, leggings, yoga pants, sweats, and T-shirts. I just wanna feel warm and cozy. I don't have the energy to put on real pants or cute shirts. Being sick makes you feel gross, so wearing comfy clothes helps you feel a tiny bit better because you feel cozy and protected.

2. Water overdose.

I drink a ton of water on the daily, but when I'm sick, I drink a whole lot more because I think it helps "flush" out all the bad stuff in my body. Sometimes I feel like I'm a fish out of water--I literally feel like I'm drying out and getting dehydrated when I don't have anything to drink even for half an hour. I literally need the hydration or I feel like I'm dying in the Sahara Desert. When I'm sick, its a constant cycle of feeling dry, drinking water, going to pee, then feeling dry again. It just never ends.

3. Green Tea.

Besides water, I also like to drink a lot of green tea when I'm sick. If I don't have green tea, any other tea works too, but mostly it's the green. I'll drink it iced or hot, and I'll drink it all day long. It helps to sooth my throat when it sore or scratchy. I also like to think it has some ancient magical tea powers in it that's working to make me feel better.

4. Bananas.

I eat a banana pretty much every day. When I'm sick, I eat more than one banana. It's mostly just because I feel like fruit is healthy and eating healthy things when you're sick will help you get better. And since there are always bananas in my house (because they're my favorite), I end up eating them since they're right there. I probably eat 10x more bananas than any other fruit. And sometimes when there's a lot of fruit in the house, I'll blend it all up in to a jumbo smoothie. Because I also love smoothies. And fruit is good for you. And when you're sick, sometimes you're too tired to chew, so drinking a smoothie is perfect.

5. Watching Jimmy Fallon Videos on Youtube.

I don't know why, but binge-watching Jimmy Fallon clips on Youtube works miracles. I love watching them and they make always me laugh. Like they say, laughter is the best medicine right? So watching funny things is good for you when you're sick (and even when you're not sick). It's like you're laughing out all of the germs inside you.

So, those are basically the 5 things that I always do when I'm sick. There may or may not be actual science behind them, and they may or may not even actually work. But, if all of these fail, then there's always the final option of just getting someone I know sick. Because everyone knows that once you pass along the sickness, you suddenly make a full recovery. Weird.