Just Because He Has the Flu, Doesn’t Mean You Have To Get It

Germs are everywhere. Whatever you do every day, you are in contact with millions of germs. Viruses, fungus, bacteria, and parasites live with us and on our bodies all the time. Some, like the bacteria that causes strep throat, live in our throats all the time without making us ill, until a certain trigger sets it off.

If we were susceptible to every germ, we would be sick all the time. The black plague would be nothing compared to what is possible now. Our media speaks of an impending mass epidemic of some awful disease regularly. In my business, I am exposed to other people’s germs every day. The only time I get sick is when my body allows it for some reason. The last two times I got the “flu” I hadn’t actually been exposed to anyone else who had it before getting sick, I was dealing with emotional stresses that triggered it.

What determines whether a person will get sick? It isn’t just exposure to a germ. Our susceptibility to germs is related to other factors in our lives and bodies.

From the perspective of Chinese medicine, the immune system is connected to the lungs.

Their job is to protect us from “things that come from outside the body,” which includes viruses, bacteria, parasites. Most illnesses that come from outside begin either in the lungs or large intestines. The emotion connected with the lungs is grief. It’s not unusual for a person to get sick with some sort of respiratory illness when he/she is suffering from grief. Gina was a client who came to me after she had sinus infections three or four times a year for 6 years. It turned out that her brother had died 6 years before and she had never really been able to get over the loss. Her sinus infections were connected to her grief. Once she dealt with that, she no longer had infections.

Stress is an obvious factor that contributes to illness. Throughout the year, you may have many relatively minor events that you would view as stressful. You may not even notice them as stress because you’re so used to dealing with life that way. Over time they accumulate in your body. Even such a relatively fun event as having your family over for Christmas will create enough stress in your body to finally tip you over the edge and make you sick.

When you finally do get sick, your body begins the process of clearing out all the old emotional stuff that you’ve held in for the whole year. It’s like having a deep cleanse. All the snot, and coughing is an emotional release as much as it is a physical one.

Getting sick in our day and age is an inconvenience, we want to get back to work, get back to functioning, get the kids back to school. We spend a lot of energy taking stuff to make the symptoms go away. We’ve developed all sorts of vaccines to keep kids from getting any kind of illness at all. When you need to be sick, you will be sick. Nothing you do will interfere with that. On the other hand, if you keep bombarding your body with stuff so that you won’t get that particular sickness, you may be setting yourself up for something worse down the line. Your body has to release the emotional stuff it holds onto somewhere.