How to stay healthy when everyone around you is sick
Super simple ways to stop illness ruining your winter
When you’re commuting into an office several times a week, your head nestling into someone’s armpit or a backpack bumping into your kidneys, the idea of a sick day dozing on the sofa with Netflix and a takeaway can be oddly appealing. But the reality is that most of us just can’t afford to be ill. Maybe we’ve got young kids to look after or maybe we live alone and there’s no one to run to the shops for us. If you’re a freelancer or someone who doesn’t get sick pay, getting ill can drain your bank balance.
With so many of us required to be back in offices again post-pandemic, and the economy taking a nosedive so that jobs seem like gold-dust, presenteeism is still deeply pervasive. This means that we show up at our poorly ventilated offices with colds, flu, Covid, or whatever respiratory bug is floating around. Repeated Covid infections and lockdowns did a number on many of our immune systems too, meaning that some of us are more susceptible to these bugs than we used to be.
So how can you make sure you don’t get sick because of someone showing up at work with a fever just because they are gunning for a promotion? Or because that person on the tube coughing over you for the entire journey? Or worst of all, the person who hugs you at a party only to declare that they’re getting over a horrendous cold.
You could try going down the Dr Instagram route, buying expensive supplements, maybe getting vitamin injections or other things that will rinse your bank account.
Much better would be to try these super simple – and totally free - ways to protect yourself.
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