Last weekend, I had friends in town, and we ended up staying up late Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. We had a lot of fun, but it also ran down my batteries quite a bit. Add that to my already stressed out state, and, natch, I came down with a cold this week. I chalk this up as more anecdotal evidence supporting my theory that both stress and insufficient sleep weaken the immune system and, thus, age us faster.
In my case, a pathogen flourished. In fact, I can look back at every single cold or flu I've had in the past several years and see that they were all preceded by extra stress, overworking and burnout, lack of exercise, less nutritious diet, and/or missed sleep.
Incidentally, I've found that the best cure for the common cold is taking a couple days off from work, getting lots of sleep, and drinking prodigious amounts of orange juice. It seems that maintaining optimal health isn't such a mystery after all. Why is it that we so often neglect to do the simple things that we know will keep us healthy? I think that's the basis of my longevity experiment and this whole blog--that optimal health and longevity are very simple, straightforward, and easy to attain. We just have to turn a few well-known but oft-ignored precepts into permanent habits through conscious and willful action. Well, that's the theory anyway. We'll see how it goes.
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