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It’s Not Just A Cold, It’s ‘Sickness Behavior’
It’s just a cold. But even though I know I’m not horribly ill, I feel this overwhelming need to skip work, ignore my family and retreat to the far corner of the sofa.
I’m not being a wimp, it turns out. Those feelings are a real thing called “sickness behavior,” which is sparked by the body’s response to infection. The same chemicals that tell the immune system to rush in and fend off invading viruses also tell us to slow down; skip the eating, drinking and sex; shun social interactions; and rest.
“Those messages are so powerful they can’t be ignored,” says Philip Chen, a rhinologist at the University of Texas, San Antonio. But that doesn’t mean we don’t try. Symptoms like a stuffy nose are obvious, Chen notes, but we’re less aware that changes in mood and behavior are also part of our bodies’ natural response to infection.
It might behoove us to pay attention. There is plenty of evidence that having a cold impairs mood, alertness and working memory and that brain performance falls off with even minor symptoms.
But for most people, having a cold does not equal “take the week off.” And that means many people work sick, even when it can put others in danger.
A 2015 survey of food workers found that half “always” or “frequently” went to work while sick. And a survey of doctors and other health care providers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia found that even though 95 percent of them thought showing up to work sick puts patients at risk, 83 percent of them did it anyway. Colds were the most common cause of working sick.
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Illustration: Fanatic Studio/Collection Mix: Sub/Getty Images
