Under the Weather

 Good morning, and welcome to this Thursday Thought.

I didn’t post a video last week because I was somewhat under the weather with some kind of respiratory virus.  I suppose the general category of virus would be a cold, but anymore, who knows.  There are two hundred and some viruses that cause some kind of respiratory symptoms.  I have to wonder if they can all be categorized as “cold” viruses.

In any event, I was upright, but not feeling well.  Rest, liquids, and over-the-counter medications seemed to be the orders of the days during the worst part of it.  This one began to show up two weeks ago with just a kind of general malaise and feeling a bit “off.”  It graduated to a full-blown attack a little over a week ago, and is just now getting to the point that I don’t feel the need for the over-the-counter meds.

I saw my provider last week for another reason, but had him check me out for pneumonia or other possible health effects from the virus.  He cleared me, saying he thought it was just a virus that would run itself out in another week or so.  I tested negative for COVID and with the assurance from the doctor that there was no pneumonia or ancillary infection cropping up, stuck it out.

Respiratory illnesses for older people can be serious.  It is estimated that the geriatric population is nine times more likely to succumb to one of the hundreds of respiratory illnesses than younger populations.  Thankfully, this one didn’t rise to that level.

There are complicating and mitigating factors regarding geriatric morbidity.  General health and wellness, smoking or other exposure to lung-damaging substances, the condition of one’s immune system, whether one has received vaccinations for flu, RSV, COVID, etc., and other factors play into one’s susceptibility to a serious bout with a respiratory infection.

Now, I don’t intend for this to be a medical treatise on respiratory illnesses and ailments.  But I do believe that caring for ourselves properly can go a long way toward a better outcome when we do become under the weather with some kind of respiratory illness.  Of course, the time to do a lot of the caring comes long decades before the age of geriatrics.  How we care for ourselves when we’re in our teens, twenties, and thirties can often make a huge difference in how well we weather the storms of colds, flu, and other respiratory illnesses.

Yet those ages are often the times when we’re the least careful.  We seem to have lots of energy then.  We are relatively healthy then.  We often think of ourselves as pretty much invincible, not concerned about how things might be three, four, or five decades later.  Yet the damage, even though unseen and unfelt, is done.  And that damage comes front and center decades later when some kind of an illness hits.  We don’t have the reserves we once had.  We are in a weakened condition.  And some of us never get back out of the hole that the illness put us into.

As is often the case, God has something to say about how we care for ourselves.  There are scriptures which speak of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual self-care.  We are concentrating today on the physical aspects of self-care, so the following will refer to that.  However, don’t neglect those other aspects of self-care.

In Mark 6:31, Jesus himself tells his disciples to take some time off for rest and recouperation.  Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

In I Corinthians 6:19, Paul is more direct.  Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;  you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

One more.  This verse is not often thought of as referring to self-care, but the principle it states is very much involved in how we care for ourselves.

I Corinthians 10:31  So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

I don’t know what your overall state of health is.  What I do know is that most of us can make some improvements in how we care for ourselves.  And if you’re a younger person seeing this, begin to think about the years ahead and seek now to keep yourself in good physical, mental, emotional, and most of all spiritual condition.  I think you’ll be glad you did.

Blessings.