How often you get sick? (Cold/Flu/etc.)

So, a friend of mine recently made a comment about how most people get 2 or 3 colds a year, and I was like "Whaaa???". Then I looked it up, and alas, the average frequency of the common cold in an adult is 2-3 per year.

That seems insane to me. I would DIE if I got that many colds a year. I have a cold now, the last time I had one was almost 3 years ago, and a year and a half before that I had strep throat.

And...my immune system kind of sucks (or so I thought). I'm underweight, I don't normally take vitamins, I think hand sanitizer is a huge scam, I don't put toilet paper down on public toilet seats, I'll pretty much share my drink or fork with anyone unless they're hacking coughing or have blisters all over their mouth.

So, how often do you get sick?

I typically get pretty sick once a year. And when I say sick I mean a serious head cold or virus or some sort. A couple of times a year I might get a sore throat or the sniffles for a couple of days, but the full-blown colds and coughs are fairly uncommon.

Knocking on wood here, but I haven't had the flu in about ten years, strep throat in about fifteen, and the last time I had a bad stomach virus (food poisoning) was about three years ago.

I don't think I'm particularly healthy, either. I do take vitamins, exercise, drink lots of water, and drink tons of tea with honey. My diet leaves a lot to be desired, though. I do take a fair amount of sanitation precautions. I wash my hands a lot, use hand sanitizer, and use a fair amount of lysol, bleach, and vinegar when cleaning my home. I have all hardwood and tile so I mop frequently.

I consider myself lucky. I know a lot of people who are sick much more frequently than I am.

Maybe once every year or two, I agree with the hand sanitizer thing, I only take vitamins because of the reduced calorie diet I am on right now, I am morbidly obese, have three dogs and work in a hotel with people from all over the world staying at it. We have a bin of pens that we all use, customers and staff alike, we handle cash and credit cards, luggage carts and key cards several times a day.

My son, who is 14, was allowed to crawl in dirt, play with dogs, cats, ferrets etc pets, and he hardly get sick either, last year he had one stomach flu, the year before that was his appendix, lol.

I'd say 5ish times a year is pretty spot on. Leaning towards an average of like 3-6 times. If anyone around me is sick, I am too.

I eat healthy (sorta), exercise frequently and am a naturally pretty healthy person. I take vitamins, I drink plenty of water, I love hand sanitizer.. but...

1. College. Full of sick, stressed, packed in students with no sense of personal space. Parties alone are hot beds for germs.. libraries and classrooms coming in a close 2nd.
2. City. Public transportation ALONE. I am so grossed out with myself sometimes. I'll spend half an hour on the train, people are coughing and sneezing and I'm touching the bar that 1000000 people have touched, and then I'll get off the train and eat and I'm like "did I watch my hands. Oh god."
I live in a constant state of "on top of other people" lol
3. Dog walker. Lots of door knobs, lots of dogs, lots of people's homes..germs.
4. Boys. Full of germs. They touch everything, you don't get enough sleep cause of them, you can't sanitize saliva, they are stressful.
5. Being naturally very tidy/clean. I honestly believe my addiction to cleanliness is a huge reason why I'm sick all of the time. My apartment is sanitized weekly completely, I have germ air filter thingies, I take off shoes and wipe paws.. so I spend most of my time in a relatively germ free environment. then I go outside and it's like BAM! GERMS EVERYWHERE!
6. I am a naturally anxious personal with an oral fixation. When I am stressed, my hands go to mess with my lips. This is a very very bad idea.
7. My friends have no concept of personal space/healthy habits. What is mine is theirs. They drink out of cartons, sip out of water bottles, use my shower, sneeze on my counters, TOUCH EVERYTHING.
They can also be very huggy.
8. Netflix. I need to learn how to sleep more.

It comes in waves for me. I can be good for a few years, then one year I'll catch a few.

I used to get a cold once a year, at most. Since I had a kid I'm sick several times each year. He is a very poor sleeper and I'm always the one who gets up with him (the other half apparently cannot hear a 30 lb child yell, even after two years) so I never have proper sleep, and because we sometimes share food, I usually get whatever daycare bug he is carrying about.

Right now I have neverending bronchitis (maybe?) It is ever irksome. If I had a doctor, I'd probably cave and go, just to get proper cough meds, but no one takes new patients within a 3 week period.

I get sick 2-3 times a year with colds that last more than a day. Colds that last a day or less, or feeling under the weather because I'm fighting something off doesn't count.

I used to get sick (seriously sick) every 2-3 weeks. It changed when I started exposing myself to more germs. I stopped washing my hands before I ate, stopped using hand sanitizer before getting in my car, stopped washing my hands after going outside or paying with the dog unless they were actually dirty. . . it helped so much it was a little scary. I still remember the day where I marked that it had been one month without catching a cold on the calendar. My friends even congratulated me. :rofl1:

Now? I work in a dealership. Dealerships are GROSS. I still get sick 2-3x a year, but I lysol my desk every day and wash my hands as frequently as possible.

That's probably why. You're exposing yourself to tons and tons of bacteria and viruses in small enough amounts that it's giving your body a chance to develop immunity.

I usually get 'sick-sick' (as in throwing up, weak, bleh) about once a year, and end up with a cough once a year or less, as well. The sickest I've been was actually this year, where I was fine all year, and then got bronchitis in September (that lasted into mid-late October), and then the stomach flu in December.

Other than that I don't get that sick often. I usually am either really sick or not sick at all. I don't mind sharing water bottles/forks/etc with people, unless they are sick, and I was my hands like a regular person (sometimes before eating, after using the restroom, etc.) So I'd consider myself 'average'.

I rarely get sick, but when I do there is normally booze involved.

I am very rarely sick. The last time I was truly ill was 2004 - I was down with the flu for about 2 or 3 days. I will have a day once or twice a year where I think I'm getting sick. I'll get that scratchy throat feeling, or a sniffle, but it is gone in 24 hours. I don't even get colds. I used to credit it with working outside, and therefore not being exposed to other people/enclosed spaces so much. But I've been working in a lab for the last 3 years with chemicals that are supposed to damage your immune system - still not sick.

I do have some allergies, and very weird allergic reactions to a lot of foods that have never been really sorted out. I actually wonder if I don't have an immune system that is just in overdrive, causing both the allergy issues and the never getting sick thing.

Lol Nolu - that's where my hand sanitizer scam theory comes in. I'm like "THE DOCTORS TELL YOU TO USE THAT SO THAT IT KILLS YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM AND YOU GET SICK AND GO PAY THEM TO FIX YOU!"

I'm sort of a germaphone at home, but not in a typical way. Like it skeeves me out so much if people share towels even if they're family *gags* and I want stuff to be vacuumed and keep dust down, and I bleach my bathtub constantly, but I think people who spray down their doorknobs and phones and stuff are crazy.

I'm REALLY surprised how much everyone gets sick! Sometimes I feel a tiny bit of a cold come on, but I just drink some tea with whiskey and honey and take some astragulus root and then feel fine.

I get really really sick like, once every three years. In fact, the last time I was terribly sick was the real flu and I got it three years ago from my boss at the time.

I'll get a little sniffly, scratchy throat sort of thing, but it usually sorts itself out pretty quickly.

It's funny, because I was just talking to my DH about this. He got suuper sick about two weeks ago and we were just kind of waiting to see when I would get it, because it seems like if one of us gets sick, the other gets sick, which is normal. But it seems like it's the other way around now. If *I* get sick, he gets sick, but him getting sick hasn't gotten me sick.

I'm not huge on cleaning, or even washing my hands a lot. I will if I've touched something disgusting of course, or handled like, dog poop or raw chicken, but I don't use hand sanitizer, in fact, I absolutely hate it, it feels terrible, and I don't take vitamins, nor do I eat super healthy.

I'm also not working with the public anymore, so that probably has something to do with it

Typically once, maybe twice, a year - generally within a couple of weeks of the end of finals (which makes sense - high stress lowers immune system, once I crash my body goes off of high defense and it's vulnerable). I'm like you, though - far from OCD about washing hands and sanitizing. I don't own anything anti-bacterial, unless you include vinegar and tea tree oil in that!

A lot lol, but then I have a compromized immune system. My hub rarely gets sick and if he gets something, I wonder how bad I'll get it.
When I was at my worst and really sick, he had to take me to all my hospital and dr. appointments. He got really sick, I never seen him that ill before and it was scary. I insisted that he go to the hospital, turns out he had Influenza B. I never got it, still can't believe I dodged that bullet.

Btw, I don't use hand sanitizer and I am not a chronic hand washer either.

Constantly as far as stomach stuff goes. I am 'sick' probably around 4 days a week but I just deal with it. It sucks and I have no idea why I get sick so often.

I usually only get really sick 1-2 times a year. Last year I got a stomach flu (3 days of nothing staying down at all). I also got a sinus infection that made me unable to speak at all for a week. I went to work anyways because I felt ok for the most part. And everyone made fun of me not being able to make any kind of noise. It wasn't like my voice sounded funny, it was like I was mute.

Could it be IBS or Celiac's?

I have no idea. I've tossed around the idea of a food allergy since I have relatives with severe food allergies but I can't pin it on anything I eat specifically. I've been thinking about getting tested for lactose intolerance and gluten intolerance recently.

As far as I know IBS is just a 'we don't know what's wrong but something is wrong' type of diagnosis.

Same for me. I'll have a couple good years, then a sick year. I did get sick a lot more often in college, though, probably from all the stress.

LOL. I can relate...