The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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My toddler's daycare seems to have a biolab somewhere in the back. We are basically sick every week with something new. Even my partner who basically never experienced sickness that lasted more than 6 hours prior to our baby starting daycare, is regularly down with something. Any tips to boost our immune system that actually works?
First kid? Daycares are basically viral/bacterial warzones. Every kid of every family we know had this experience with starting daycare. The first fall is usually the worst, thereafter it comes in diminishing waves. As parents, the first autumn of the first child is absolute hell (we re-counted sick days for the first three months of our first and noticed that we literally had more sick days than healthy days in that timespan). You will get better, as will your first, and latter kids usually have some pre-existing resilience from siblings anyway, so once you get through it will most likely never be as bad again.
I recommend sleeping as much as possible, and keeping your temp high is also good. I've gotten into the habit of chucking meds in the morning to make the symptoms in the early day more bearable and get some work done nonetheless, but try to wrap it up fast and then just sit on the sofa or bed with a blanket and hot tea and ideally sleep early. Once you notice one parent starts getting sick, you want the other parent to look after the kids as much as possible so that the sick parent can get rest and get over it, since in 90% of cases the other parent will follow and you'll want to be at the top of your game once that happens. By far the worst, especially if you don't have grandparents or other help around, is kids who are still grumpy from sickness but who don't want to sleep all day anymore and two sick parents.
Most families have a typical trajectory, try to learn it and work with it. For example for us, one of the kids is usually the first one, then the sex-matched parent (so me for our son, or my wife for the daughter), and then the other kid and the other parent follow a few days after. Can't completely explain why, but it's far in excess of random chance, and there are some sex-specific peculiarities around the immune system that there is some plausibility here.
Otherwise it's really specific to the sickness and the person unfortunately. Keep your nose/airways clean for good breathing, get some fresh air even during the night, some people swear by natural oil or red light, just try a lot and see what helps. I've had good experience with supplements with vitamins c, d & zinc.
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