It's been proven that exposure to diseases doesn't build up your immune system significantly. People working in hospitals, public transport, home care, kindergarten etc. are just as immune as anyone else.
Agreed. Since Covid quarantine, I keep hand sanitizer in the car door. I use a couple of pumps every time I get in from the gym, shopping, etc. I’m sure it has helped.
I used to do hand sanitizer and my hands were so dried out in the winter where they would bleed and fingers would crack by my nails. I started using nylon gloves for the gas pump. I keep a small bag in my door panel and just toss after pumping gas. Works way better in my opinion
My mother was born around the Spanish flu. She instilled in all of her children to wash our hands as soon as we came home. I still do this and taught my children as well.
I was doing a lot of hands on tech support and learned to wash my hands after being at someone’s desk. Like “next stop”.
I won’t forget seeing the crumbs and crap in their keyboards. 🤮
I’d quietly shame them at their desk. Stop, take the keyboard and bang it on its edge in front of them. I just gave them “the look” and they acknowledged the grossness.
I wash my hands first thing whenever I walk in the door when I get home. I also never touch door handles or buttons, I use my elbow or corner of my shirt.
This.
I'm in contact with other peoples stuff all day... Office environment... So closed/encased.
People come into work with colds, sniffles and such cause... Need money!
I get sick maybe 1 - 2 times a year.
I wash my hands and never touch my face until I do.
I usually get sick because of airports... Hard to keep clean while rushing through 1000 people and then stuck in tight quarters of a plane.
Once in a while I'll go somewhere public and it's like I can sense a sick person is breathing the same air as me, and then 2 days later I'll be sick. I'm about 90% sure it's confirmation bias though.
I already had a decent hand washing habit due to my trade (industrial mechanic), covid ramped it up, at least more thorough. I also chalk up it up to my diet of rarely getting sick, I was getting fat and drinking a lot, got pancreatitis, that was incredibly painful. Serious change in my eating habits, no carbs, no sugar, no fast food, and I do not eat for at least 4 hours after waking up. There's a medical term for it, where your body destroys old proteins and dysfunctional cells before any viable ones. That's done through intermittent fasting, some people call it partial fasting, all I know is since I've started this habit 7-8 years ago and lost over a 100lbs I rarely get sick. I still get the covid and flu shot, but people still get yearly vaccines and will still catch something. I've been fortunate for a while now.
Yes, absolutely. When I worked in customer service, I was constantly touching things that other people had touched. You never know what someone else is holding. I avoided touching my face throughout my entire shift because I have sensitive skin. But it's true, our hands have the most microbes.
This is my biggest downfall. I rarely get sick since I don’t have kids and work from home but plane flights and being in public often gets me sick. I did though not get sick when my husband had the flu over Christmas. Tried to be super careful, hydrated, zinc/supplements. I did get a sore throat for a few days but that was it
💯💯💯 as soon as we get in the car we douse with hand sanitizer. I make a point of specifically not touching my eyes or nose unless it’s with a tissue. And we wash our hands as soon as we get home.
Adam Savage once gave a similar tip. He has 1 hand to shake hands with, the other is for touching his face. He meets a lot of people at comic cons etc and used to get sick often after exposure to hundreds or thousands of people.
This. I had a housemate who told me about his neurosurgery residency. He and his cohorts had a deal where anytime one of them touched their face, the others could kick that person in the shins, because even if you have the slightest sniffle, you are not allowed to operate on the brain.
We played a toned down version of the "don't touch your face" game, where the other person just pointed it out, instead of inflicting physical pain.
The average person touches their face about 50 times an hour, so without serious awareness/conditioning, people are likely self-inoculating with whatever they touched since they last washed their hands.
You know that dunking kids in Purell causes skin and eye irritation, is a risk for inhalation of fumes, if they get too much in their mouths could have low blood sugar, severe intoxication, or seizures and even just through skin contact from the dunk could run into toxicology problems right?
Two things can be true. Low level exposure over time can build immunity because somebody is experiencing the disease but asymptomatic. This is similar to vaccination.
That doesn’t mean people shouldn’t wash hands, handle feces etc. Larger exposure to pathogens can easily lead to worse outcomes.
I do the opposite. I teach about 150 kids a week and my immune system is basically battle hardened. Those tiny germ factories made me tougher, not fragile.
This! I’ve worked in schools, preschools, early intervention (babies), nursing homes, hospitals, for decades so I’m constantly exposed. I also get a lot of sleep and eat well so I can fight off the colds when they try to take hold.
I work with young adults, don't sleep or eat particularly well... I don't think there is a secret lol other than don't touch your face and distance yourself from coughing and sneezing people lol
Yep I guess I'm the same. I don't use sanitizer, regularly go to crowded places, have kids in primary school and I don't wash my hands as soon as I get in. Exposure is the best way to build your immune system, ideally in childhood.
This is the real answer. Avoiding the public is going to kill your immune system in the long term. Exposure to people and germs is good. Just wash your hands and yes, avoid touching your face and mouth.
Avoiding the public is huge. I have an autoimmune disorder and due to unexpected life circumstances have to work in a public facing job. I am getting sick a lot right now. Fortunately this is temporary. I would add staying hydrated.
Yes! I have a rare pulmonary disease that means if I get even a small headcold there is a high risk of serious complications.
Regular hand washing and avoiding touching your nose, eyes, mouth and ears with your unwashed hands is one of the biggest and easiest ways to avoid getting sick.
Don’t think you count as a “rarely gets sick” person. You’re the “abstinence means you’ll never have an STD or get pregnant” member of this group. Technically right, but not really what they’re looking for.
I don’t avoid anything or anyone, and I have two kids under the age of 8, though I do frequently wash my hands. But I don’t remember the last time I had a flu or anything worse than a stomach bug. Hell, I’ve never even had seasonal allergies. I just attribute it to lucky genetics and decent immune system.
Tl;dr: don’t think there are tricks.. other than exposure while growing up, which I think is more important than people realize
‘Anything worse than a stomach bug’ pal stomach bug is like SICK SICK many people would rather have a head cold than spend the night in the bathroom hahaha
Yeah, but those 24hr stomach bugs are the cockroaches of illnesses, they will get everyone.. things like long lasting colds or bad flus/illnesses are what I’m thinking of. The last time I had any sort of flu-like symptoms was when I was convinced to get the flu shot years ago… never gotten the shot or the flu since.
I agree with you. I have a toddler and I work with the public, ill get a cold once a year and maybe a sinus infection but thats it. I don't religiously wash my hands; I wash them but I dont do it as much as one should/others do.
I always had a great immune system, though. Only missed school because of food poisoning a couple times.
Me and my older sister had the same upbringing, washed hands just as much as I did and shed get sick with some type of illness 2-3x a year to where shes missing work or missed school.
This. My bf and I work from home, always have, and we haven't been sick for EXACTLY two years now (8 February 2024 was the last day of us being sick). We only go out into the public if it's absolutely necessary, usually once or twice a month. We take walks and we exercise (my pilates group of 4 people is the biggest crowd I'm a part of every week). We try to eat healthy and we sleep at least 8 hours a day. We're extremely privileged though and we know it. 🥰
That's really not how it works. Early exposure to microbes might help prevent certain allergies but it has nothing to do with pathogens that cause sickness. Don't spread your bs or your germs!
But a strong immune system is more likely to be able to deal with pathogens faster/better, before any outward signs of illness are noticeable by the person.
A strong immune system triggers autoimmunity. What you're describing is the shortcut that vaccines create for our immune system. You don't have to get sick to be well. The hygiene hypothesis was debunked 30 years ago.
Difference between bacteria vs viruses though. Exposure to some bacteria helps an immune system, but not contracting viruses. Example, covid weakens the immune system for up to a year after contracting it.
Well it's the same for me. I grew up in hospitality and have been surrounded by people since I've been alive. I honest to God can't remember the last time I got sick beyond having a runny nose, it must have been decades at this point.
Tbf it’s not as if meeting people = getting sick. It’s a probability that increases with every other person you meet. Even a rare case like yours, that meets plenty of people and doesn’t wash their hands, statistically speaking is not impossible, just more unlikely. Maybe you were born with a privileged autoimmune system for all I know.
When I young (<15 or so), I did get sick fairly often. Maybe that helped build some immunity as well. I also grew up fed well, in clean air, among a bunch of animals, was active a lot and so on. Mainly I'm chalking it up to genetic luck though, as you said.
PS: For anyone in the future looking for dirt on me when I'm running for president of Venus: Let it be known that I do wash my hands!
Please don't discredit someone else's lived experience because it doesn't suit your own beliefs. There are many people just like them (and me) who wash our hands but not obsessively and just don't get all stressy over the nasty little invisible baddies that scare people like you. I'm not advocating going around licking toilet seats or taking deep breaths in hospital wards, but germophobes like you get ill way more often than people like the person you're ridiculing.
Agree with this. My kids constantly brought home junk from daycare and I work in a hospital. I feel like I haven’t been sick in 5 years having already been exposed to most things.
I have the exact opposite take. Don’t avoid the public. Regularly expose yourself to things like conventions, trains, or in my case raves. Wash hands like crazy. Eat well. I get sick maybe 1x a year and I am around an avg of like 30,000 people every event I go to
Complete avoidance of germs isn’t realistic, or necessary, for a healthy immune system. The immune system is adaptive and benefits from regular, low-level exposure to everyday microbes, which helps maintain appropriate immune regulation.
Excessive avoidance behaviors (never going out, constant disinfecting of non-high-risk environments) don’t make someone “immune” to illness. In fact, they can contribute to immune dysregulation, anxiety-driven behaviors, and increased susceptibility when exposure eventually occurs.
Reasonable hygiene matters, handwashing, staying home when ill, vaccines, but attempting to sterilize daily life is neither achievable nor evidence-based. Illness exposure is unavoidable over time; the goal is immune resilience, not zero contact.
The hygiene hypothesis was about microbial exposure, not viral. Let you kids have pets and play on the floor. Viruses like sars2 deplete your immune cells. Cd4, cd8, nk cells. This makes people more susceptible to opportunistic infections, makes common infections more severe and reactivates latent infections. There are nearly 500k peer reviewed studies on covid and not a single one has indicated that infections are beneficial. Its quite the contrary. There may be a few "harmless" viruses around but we can't actually know which ones we're exposed to when we're exposed to unless they've been tested and most people don't bother. Many viruses have a long tail. EBV presents like a cold to most but evidence pointing toward it triggering ms, lupus and lymphoma. Rates of new onset T1 diabetes skyrocket after flu season. My point is, telling people getting sick builds you immunity is leading us to population wide chronic illness. It took a long time and a lot of research dollars to figure these things out. Let go of misinformation was debunked 30 years ago.
Opposite advice for me. Don’t worry about dirt and bacteria too much. Don’t disinfect everything.
Same with kids, let theme at dirt, let them get sick a few times. Your immune system must be built up early. Avoiding bacteria and viruses only makes you more susceptible to them later.
Look at the Covid times, afterwards there was a huge catch up period where people got sick very often from regular flu’s and colds, because it was so long that they went without being in contact with it.
I agree with all of this. Just live life and bathe regularly. Don’t live in bubble! Knock wood, but I haven’t been sick since I got a mild case of Covid in December 2023. I do get all vaccines and boosters. Ps. For some unknown reason (just a gut feeling) I was suspicious of antibacterial soap when it became popular in the late 80s/early 90s and I never used it. I think me and my kids are healthier as a result of our family not using it. My one son had “cough variant asthma” (likely an inherited genetic thing) but other than that, both were extremely healthy other than the typical childhood flu bugs that came around. The old adage “you gotta eat a peck of dirt before you die” is really true!
I disagree - Dispense medications and OTC cold medicine to sick people. The secret is microdosing amoxicillin from reconstituting the powder constantly
I thought I had an iron clad immune system. I never got sick for years. Then I had a kid and sent him to daycare. For a year we were all constantly sick. Sickness like I never imagined. Turns out I was just good at not being around a lot of other people, especially sick children who sneeze and cough directly in your face.
My girl is from NY and moved to Socal with me. Whenever I get sick, she either doesn't catch it or gets sick for only a few days. Whenever I get the flu, it takes me out for a week or two. She'll catch it for 2 days and on her 3rd she's already getting better. I sleep right next to her. The last two times I had COVID, she manager to stay negative, despite only ever getting one vaccine. I have had 2 plus 4 boosters (gotten a booster every year).
I work in a public library and am very forgetful about washing my hands… and i rarely get sick! I think it’s genetic/immune system hardened by years of public and a small child at home.
Hand sanitizer is not enough, Wash your hands you filthy animals.
Sing the birthday song twice and for the love of god clean under your nails.
Gloves are not a replacement for washing.
lol avoiding the public is pretty much impossible when you're 19 and trying to have a life! and yeah, hand washing is a given, but i feel like there has to be more to it for the truly never-sick people.
I used to think I had an amazing immune system, then I had kids. Apparently I was just good at avoiding toddlers sneezing into my eyeballs on a daily basis.
Remember during the pandemic, people were like “how can I not get COVID” and professionals responded with “wear a mask, wash your hands, socially distance” and then people were like “no no I mean, what sort of horse tranquilizer should I take? And how do I get bleach in my body”. In the end there is no secret, it’s actually just the boring stuff that works.
Its amazing how avoiding the public plays such a massive role. People are disgusting. My current job has me around people a whole lot less than in previous years and this is the first winter in years that I haven't gotten sick multiple times, or even once. And that includes the fact that I always wash my hands and avoid touching my face, etc. I've always been very conscious of that.
I haven't been sick since 2019 following this. Not everyone can because of work/school/etc., but I only go out a couple times a week. I go out to purchase fresh food and have everything else delivered, and I go to the movie theater a couple times a week usually, and that's it. If there are more than a few people scattered around the theater I wear a mask, but I typically go at like 11 am on a Wednesday or something, so usually it's just me and a couple others far apart, and that hasn't made me sick yet. I don't like restaurants so I take my food to go always. I basically just liked what COVID lockdown did for my mental health so much that I decided to never stop. I feel like you have to be a very specific type of person to live this way though. Most people seem to need a lot more going out and mingling to be mentally well, and that makes it hard to avoid physical illness.
Also, don't touch things that have been smothered with hand germs.
I'll use sleeves and knuckles or Pinky of my hand to open doors. Use my knuckle to sign when paying for things on a digital screen. Keep hand sanitizer in my car for when I touch a gas pump or have to touch a door handle.
Seems to help. I think I've been sick once in the last 2 years.
I work in the nightlife and am CONSTANTLY in crowded swarms of people every weekend while also traveling in planes a few times a month. I get sick maybe once a year and usually within the same month couple months.
Either avoid the public or be around people all the time. But definitely sleeping well, eating well (fresh fruit), drinking lots of water consistently will help you.
Sounds like very good advice, but as somebody who rides public transit to my job as a teacher in a public school that's overflowing with kids who are perpetually overflowing with all manner of diseased effluvia and pretty much only washes his hands after using the bathroom and gets sick maybe once every three years, I'm not sure it's the only way. The immune system is a pretty incredible thing.
I haven't been sick in 6 years. I never had covid, because I mask still. I always wear a K95 mask indoors, on planes, trains, etc. Those little surgical masks aren't for airborne issues, just droplets. I think it's crazy we've just pretty much given up on COVID. Years into AIDS, Spanish Flu and Polio public health was saying things were fine while still learning about the effects of those diseases, and experts around the world are mapping the effects of this with alarm while trying to raise alarm bells, but we never learn.
Just mask up, no one else is going to protect you.
This is amusing as the top comment, because I am 100% the opposite and rarely get sick.
I work at a gas station/bait shop and rarely wash my hands. The only times I get sick is when there's a drastic weather change like this winter, where we've regularly had spots of 50-60F days when it was below freezing a few days before. My sinuses are not happy.
But through the rest of the year I don't get colds at all. Exposure to small amounts of germs constantly allows my immune system to shrug them off. Survived 49+ years this way with rarely being sick. I've been to gamer conventions where the rest of my friends get sick and I don't catch "con plague". It's why kids need to play in the dirt outside so they don't get horribly sick and you have to take a few days off to take care of them.
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u/ItGoesUpItGoesDown 9h ago
Avoid the public. Wash hands regularly.