One of the misconceptions I keep running into, especially during the fall when clients start thinking about staying well through winter, is that flu prevention and norovirus prevention are basically the same thing. Get your flu shot, wash your hands, spray some Lysol on the doorknobs, and you’re covered for both. The logic is understandable. …
A reader sent me a message in December asking whether she should take her 7-week-old daughter to the emergency room. “She has what looks like a cold but she’s breathing faster than usual,” she wrote. “Could it be RSV? How do I tell the difference?” That question, or a version of it, comes up regularly, …
A 2020 analysis published in Nature Medicine tracked close contacts of COVID-19 patients and concluded that approximately 44 percent of secondary transmission happened before the infected person showed any symptoms at all. That number changed a lot of assumptions. For a long time, infection control guidance operated on a workable but incomplete logic: if you …
People load up on supplements the moment a virus starts circulating and forget to wash their hands properly. Every single time. That’s not a dig. It’s a pattern I’ve seen across years of working with health professionals and the clients they serve, and it points to a real problem with how most of us think …
Every cold and flu season, I see the same pattern play out. Parents load up their shopping carts with immunity-boosting supplements, elderberry syrups, and vitamin C megadoses, and then still spend the winter cycling through one illness after the next. Meanwhile, their neighbor, not buying anything particularly special, seems to float through the season just …
The bottle of hand gel by your kitchen sink. The small one clipped to your bag. The dispenser mounted at the entrance of every clinic, daycare, and office building you walk into. These have become as automatic as buckling a seatbelt. Reach in, pump, rub. Done. Protected. Against norovirus, that habit might be giving you …
A reader messaged me during peak flu season a couple of winters ago. Her household had gone down one by one, despite what seemed like careful precautions. The sick teenager was kept in their room. Dishes were kept separate. The bathroom was wiped down daily. And yet, four days after her daughter recovered, two other …
Most people I’ve spoken with over the years assume that getting sick at home means they brought something back from the outside world. The gym, the office, the school drop-off line. And yes, those places matter. But the research keeps pointing to something that doesn’t get nearly enough attention: a significant number of infections circulate …
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard some version of this: “I switched to natural products, but I don’t think they’re actually doing anything.” And here’s the thing that frustrates me about that conversation, because the problem usually isn’t the natural products. It’s that most people are reaching for white vinegar or a …
