The enemy in your body

We are currently experiencing a cold spell in southern Germany. That would be exactly the weather situation to catch a cold. That's what we think. So how come we are catching far fewer colds at the moment? Colds don't have so much to do with cold and bad weather. (They have to do with viruses and wearing masks, but that's another story).

Jennifer Ackerman is a writer who has won many awards. She has been writing about science and nature topics for The New York Times Magazine, Scientific American and National Geographic for over 25 years. She found that all the typical cold symptoms - sniffles, hoarseness, aching limbs.... show up more when people have a well-functioning immune system.

This sounds paradoxical at first. It means that when someone has a noticeably severe infection with a cold, cough and sore throat, their immune system is doing a good job.

We learned in detail last year how viruses get into the body. Once inside, they dock onto human cells and pretend to be useful to us. Once they have taken up residence, the viruses drop their mask and the immune system gears up for a counterattack. It tries to expel the alien with a cold and a cough.

Next time you have a bad cold, be happy! Yes, of course - the whole thing is anything but pleasant. But you can be sure your immune system is doing its job well. That's what Jennifer Ackerman says.

Our body functions like a network that connects the organs, muscles, bones, joints and tendons. Therefore, disturbances in the system, such as injuries that cause us to not be able to move well, do not just affect one part of the body. Often we go to the physiotherapist because we have pain in one place and learn that the cause of the pain is elsewhere in the body.

Some time ago, I attended a lecture and learned that some physiotherapists take a very precise and detailed medical history at the beginning of therapy. Gender, age and operations are quickly listed. Then it is about experienced traumas, psychological stresses and the biography from birth until today. It can play a role how our birth was.

The purpose of this time-consuming exercise is to get an individual and comprehensive picture of the patient. At the first disturbance, the body starts to compensate and from one event to another, it continues to compensate.

So it can be like a criminal case to trace the origin of the pain. If you have been through many difficult situations, there is a kind of map of the pain or disturbances in your body. In this search process, it becomes clear that the body is doing amazing work and is trying hard to balance.

Perhaps we were not pleased when our parents stayed up at night waiting for us. We would rush past them in a huff. In the same way, we tend to want to run away from pain.

Is it possible to reset the pain situation? An important step is to learn how pain works, what it wants. Studies have shown that learning about pain can be pain-relieving. In the best case, the new knowledge leads to a change of perspective.

When we are told that we have a disease and we don't know anything about it, we worry about what could be behind it. When we get educated or informed about it, the symptoms are not gone, but we understand what is happening.