5 Reasons You Get Sick After The New Year

 

  Good morning y'all! As I had mentioned in an earlier post we all had colds right after Christmas and into the new year, so fun right?! Well thankfully we're all better now, but it got me thinking. We get sick almost every year right around the new year. We're pretty healthy around the rest of the year and we don't get many major illnesses, so I can't really complain. Instead I'll just walk you through 5 reasons I believe we get sick every new year. Now I must forewarn y'all I am NOT a doctor, I just play one on Google, so enjoy my personal commentary on our "new year, new colds".

1. Cold Weather
   Some of you are probably thinking "well duh!", but seriously it's true that cold weather is just another reason you find yourself more susceptible to that pesky cold going around. There was a study at Yale a couple years ago that finally confirmed suspicions that cold weather can weaken the immune system. It also probably doesn't help that we live in Virginia and our weather is more all over place than a toddler on a sugar high. One minute it's 60 degrees, and the next day it's 18 degrees and snowing. Welcome to Virginia.

2. The Holiday High
   With Christmas comes excitement and good feelings about family and friends, and maybe even a few people you don't normally like haha. Christmas truly puts a little more peace in the air. Well it does for me. They even say people are more likely to be looking for love right after Thanksgiving up until Valentine's Day. My point is that Christmas brings happiness, it's the high point of the year for so many families and individuals. Everyone knows that endorphins are the chemical explanation for happiness, and most people start to feel a little low once it's over. When your endorphins are a little lower it weakens your immune system leaving you open to whatever germs and bugs are going around. Merry Christmas ya filthy animals.

3. Crowds/ Family Gatherings
    Now I love family/friend gatherings around Christmas. God wants us to not only honor the birth of His son, but to be thankful for our brothers and sisters, and cousins, and uncles, and that one person that you're not really sure how you're related to but you love just the same. With all that said OF COURSE we're all going to be sick after Christmas we all just came in from the cold and are in someone's living room with sometimes 30 other people you haven't seen since last year. You don't know if so and so washed their hands, and they don't know if they're about to fall sick the next day. Oh the suspense haha! Hey at least everyone is all sick together.

4. Poor Diet
   At that family gathering you probably had at least 2 of your favorite foods, which I would dare to guess are riddled with fat. That's why they're delicious, duh! Not gonna lie, I love any food that I know I'm going to hate myself for eating in just a few hours because I'm so full. But I'm usually too full to even eat dinner so I call it even. Then I eat leftovers for breakfast. I say all this to say we all know that keeping up good dietary habits is good for our overall health. So when we veer off that track our immune system turns against us. Which really makes no sense to me, like you would think it would be happy with all that mac 'n' cheese!

5. The Christmas Rush
    My final reason I believe we get sick right after the new year is basically all the different things we're doing right around Christmas time. We're going to this family gathering, we have to bring a casserole to this get together, we still have to wrap so and so's presents, oh yeah we have to get that person a present. We're staying up later, and getting up earlier. Every weekend is more jam packed than the next. When you're stretched too thin your immune system gets even thinner. We love Christmas, and all the memories made, but we're maybe just a little glad once we can catch our breath. Then comes the colds.
  Nevertheless, the good news is this: when we look back on Christmases of the past we don't think about how sick we were right after. No, we instead remember our family and friends, and all the funny/sentimental/weird memories we made. Then we get a cold.

Linking up with April