No cure so you gotta rest. Nose is stuffed so you gotta mouth breathe. Throat is dry from mouth breathing. Dry throat makes it painful to swallow. Pain keeps you from sleeping and recovering. Lack of sleep leads to worse symptoms like piercing headaches. Need to rest to get rid of the headaches. Headache and swallowing is too painful to rest properly. Lack of rest perpetuates headaches, nose congestion, dry throat, painful swallowing.
What is this BS
If it makes you feel any better, your microscopic attacker is not having a very good time with your body’s response either. You’re the undefeated champion in this arena so far, keep up the winning streak.
I don’t know about who is the champion. The virus eventually fails to multiply in the host, but it meanwhile spreads to others.
How about we consider everyone a champion?
Trophies all around!
This woke-ass participation trophy shit is ruining my flu season!
Dude, you are in a million years battle with other organisms trying to exploit and kill you, and you’re fucking winning. I would call that a blazing success. The other organisms are trying their literal best, their survival depends on it, and you just KEEP. ON. WINNING.
Some might even call this million years battle a cold war
deep sigh
Okay, here’s your upvote. Now leave.
Actually, please don’t. It’s Lemmy and we need all the users we can get
I’m not using Lemmy. Do I have to leave?
No, it’s actually the opposite. Piefed users are required to stay forever. It’s in your terms of service.
Russia and US typing in the chat…
15 proxy states typing
The funny thing is, thanks to fever, this “cold war” is both literally and figuratively a hot war.
God dammit.
These organisms are doing their best, okay? They’re just too smol.
bad at it? you literally rest for a week then recover, as opposed to dying. your pretty fucking good at it. you just don’t know how bad it could be
The real question should be:
Why is our society built around disposable labor and assuming we will be at 100% functionality all the time?
Capitalism
It isn’t? That’s why you get paid sick leave.
Lol good one.
Trying to figure out if you are joking, or you are from a nicer country that getting paid sick leave is something everyone gets. Good chunk of the american work force, has to negotiate with their boss, go to a doctor that’s going to charge them between $50-$200 so they can tell you “yep you have a cold, here’s a note so you can prove it to your boss”, so you can give that note to your boss and hopefully not get fired for taking some UNPAID days off. (of course as most states are “at will” if you do that too often you still run the risk of getting fired for “no reason” later).
It’s the nicer country.
That really depends on what country you live in. The US doesn’t require sick leave AFAIK and Canada only requires 5 days. So that’s like 300 days where you have to choose between getting better or paying rent. More socially progressive countries get paid sick leave, not everyone.
Look at this guy with his sick leave and ability to stay home and rest when he’s sick!
What about him?
He looks well rested.
Yeah I think the real thing is just not understanding how bad a cold without an immune system would be. IE only real way to put it in context is, read up on what an immune-comprimised individual goes through when they get a cold.
It’s a bit like saying
“why is my countries missile defense so crappy, whenever we’re attacked there’s chunks of metal all over the ground, so much smoke and noise it makes it hard to sleep, why are we so bad at defending from missiles”.
The immune system is fucking incredible, you should read up on it and then you’ll never make a post like this again!
I was about to say this too. It does a pretty fucking incredible job at fighting colds.
Wait. Was this a troll post, and I just ate it up?
Blows my mind that the solution for so many things is just ‘try not to make it worse while your body does magic’ Broken bone? Stop moving it and wait. Cold? Drink water, sleep, and wait. Cut? Cover it up so it’s not actively bleeding, and wait. Even in modern medicine were still letting the body do the heavy lifting, just trying to help it out where we can. No wonder diet and exercise are such good preventative measures
There was a cartoon on it too, no?
Those symptoms you’ve described? It’s your immune system doing that to you. On purpose, not a mistake. Nose is stuffed because you’re producing extra mucous to flush infection out of your airways. Dry throat because the tissues are inflamed to directly kill viruses using the body’s transport system. Yeah, it’s bad for you - but it’s worse for the little invaders.
Yes, I know it’s the natural defences popping off but I’m saying I’m having a hard time keeping this plane in the sky when my copilot keeps slapping me with a hot seafood entrée. Y’know??
It’s rough but the other option is death. The cold would kill you if your immune system wasn’t doing this to you.
It’s a good argument against the intelligent design theory, isn’t it?
I was originally going to include “what part of this is intelligent design?!?!” In the post but I didn’t want it to devolve into a religious debate. But seriously, how intelligent is our design when our defense mechanism makes recovery even more difficult to achieve?
Like some asshole is out there designing a vehicle that runs on solar but you’re also only allowed to drive it when the sun is down.
The better comparison would be to say that solar power panels are a complete design mistake because they get hot when in the sun thus hampering their function. Yes, it is not perfect, but it still works way better than nothing.
You’ve survived every one you’ve caught so far haven’t you? That’s a testament to it’s awesomeness!
And you haven’t been mauled by any lions either, have you?
All that IS the response, and without it, a virus would kill you.
You are better off toughing it out than taking drugs that block the responses.
thank you for your advice, doctor…?
Dr Trustmebro. It’s Romanian.
A lot of people in this thread saying that viruses are losing when we live through a cold. That’s just not true. Their goal is to live/reproduce, not to kill. They’re winning at a different game, it just hurts us as a byproduct.
You know symptoms is the tangible evidence of your body fighting the fucker? I’m no scientist but I remember hearing that apparently a raised body temp is one method of killing the cunt that’s trying to attack you.
Sure it is unpleasant. But you basically just have to rest for a day or two and your body will cure itself … I’d say that’s a pretty good response.
And thanks to our brains we also have medicine to combat most of these symptoms, making it really just a minor inconvenience.
The common cold is a family of coronaviruses, our bodies have been fighting off their mutations for millennia. An mRNA vaccines for colds, if I remember correctly, was in the works, but, well, we’ve all seen what’s happening there
Its more often rhinoviruses rather than coronaviruses or other families
I disagree, there’s no way a rhino could fit in there
Everything’s a dildo if you’re brave enough!
deleted by creator
So does that mean a long time ago people were dying of the cold in droves?
Certainly possible, if not likely, that when these viruses first evolved to infect humans or human ancestors they caused increased mortality. Common coronaviruses and rhinoviruses still kill a lot of people, they’re often associated with pneumonia
See the natives of America after Europeans showed up.
No. But covid-19 belongs to the same group of viruses that also includes the common cold.
With these symptoms you can’t run, you can’t hunt, you can’t burn too many calories. Your body does everything in its power to prevent you from using resources your body needs to defeat the sickness.
That’s the reason why placebo meds work: the fact that the doctor gave you medicine means that you are really sick, and therefore you have to rest. In reality you’re behaving differently and therefore you’ll get healthy faster.
Oh: and you’re slightly dehydrated so you don’t have that much risk of infecting others.
We are tribal animals. Apes together strong. We care for the sick ones because that means they can focus on recovery.
Is that why placebos work? I could swear they had done studies that show that placebos can be as effective as medication under certain conditions, all other things being equal. Maybe not as effective as medication, but more effective than non-treatment.
I found a study some time ago about pets and placebos, where the subscription of meds for the pet resulted in different behavior by the pet owner, I couldn’t find it but here’s an article about it: https://www.veterinaryprescriber.org/free-articles/the-caregiver-placebo-effect-in-osteoarthritis-treatments
Good find. Key paragraph:
When measured objectively over the 42-day evaluation period, limb function improved in 12.1% and worsened in 8.6%, but did not change in most dogs. By contrast, caregivers (both owners and vets) reported improvements in lameness from the start, with the reported improvements increasing with time. The caregiver placebo effect appeared to be around 57% for owners and 40–45% for vets and was statistically significant at all assessment time points.
Objective measurements are one way to detect this effect. Another would be a true double-blind trial where neither owner nor vet knows which medicine was given.
Only if the medication doesn’t work. The evidence is that placebos don’t work. Mostly, the placebo effect is a statistical illusion.
It is plausible that the body will expend more energy to combat a disease if you are (sub-)consciously convinced that you are cared for and don’t need to stress. Stress hormones down-regulate the immune response. Cortisol, used for treatment of autoimmune disorders like asthma and allergies, is a stress hormone.
But a sham treatment could also have the opposite effect. If your subconscious understands that as a signal that you must get back into action, you may end up releasing stress hormones. These psychological effects are just too idiosyncratic and fickle to be used reliably.
Stuff like broken bones or cancer doesn’t respond to psychology at all. The body is already doing all it can.
You’re only seeing the colds that made it through the defenses, without having any means of measuring the ones your immune system successfully blocked or kicked out before they could take hold.
So your statistics are flawed.
And even then most of the ones that made it through/past the immune system are still eventually fought off again by the immune system. I.e. you don’t have to take an external antibiotic for every cold.
When I have a cold I wear a cloth mask to bed and that actually helps reduce the sore throat I get from breathing dry air. Also, it does a pretty good job of preventing my partner from getting sick as well!
Your immune system and the virus are at war, the symptoms are collateral damage.
