Hopefully at least a few of you have noticed my being M.I.A over the past few weeks and have been eagerly anticipating what is sure to be a great post.This unfortunate absence can be attributed to Queen's University and this ridiculous event they host called exam period. For some reason, my school thinks it appropriate to sentence their students to three weeks of chronic sleep deprivation, shitty food, and artificial indoor environments.

_Few people actually enjoy exam time, yet the tradition has managed to stick around for over a century. Nevertheless, strange and undesirable groups who crave the winter season and the accompanying stresses of exams and holiday gatherings do exist. A portion of these are categorized as viral infections, and count influenza and the common cold among their ranks. This group flourishes during the winter months and spread like, well, viruses.

Every year from October through April (or April through October for my Aussie readers) people switch from complaining about a lack of time to enjoy the outdoors to complaining about having to walk the fifty feet from their cars to the grocery store, or having to roll down their windows at the Starbucks drive through. This period also corresponds to elevated rates of influenza, and is thus aptly referred to as flu season.

Most people readily identify the winter season as one with a higher risk for contracting the flu, but fail to advance their thinking to ask: why? Dr. Robert Hope-Simpson was the first to hypothesize the cause of seasonal fluctuations in influenza rates in the 80's. Recently, researchers have taken his thinking a step further to determine that low levels of vitamin D increase a person's risk for influenza by 40%. As temperatures drop and people flock to their snuggies and TVs rather than out of doors destinations, they miss out on sunshine induced vitamin D production. This increases their chances of getting the flu. Accordingly, for those wishing to increase their blood levels of vitamin D through the winter months without roaming the Earth near-naked, I recommend supplementing with 2000-4000 IU of vitamin D daily (providing you are not at a higher risk for vitamin D toxicity).

_Like most reading this, I find mornings hectic as I attempt to feed, shower, and dress myself in the 5 minutes allotted following four subsequent alarm clock snoozes. This being the case, I rarely remember to supplement with vitamin D seven days a week, nor do I expect everyone else to. There is good news, however. Should you find yourself under the vomit inducing spell of the flu, increasing your ingestion of certain probiotics (lactobacillus casei), found in some dairy such as aged cheddar cheese, can decrease the duration of your flu by up to 2 days. When I'm busy emptying my stomach contents onto the bathroom floor 3 feet away from the toilet, the last thing I want to do is gorge myself on old cheese. For this reason, I suggest supplementing with a probiotic drink (always choose vanilla over chocolate flavouring for supplements unless you have developed a palette for cardboard) containing lactobacillus casei, an alternative readily procurable from your local health food store. 

_Less serious but far more annoying than the flu is rhinopharyngitis, or, the common cold. Personally, I would rather cite Dr. Oz as a credible reference than have a sore throat or runny nose. Luckily for me, however, my supplementation with vitamin D also significantly reduces my risk for contracting a cold. As I have little hope that the common cold will be eradicated within my lifetime, I have also sourced out zinc supplementation as a means to reduce cold duration by a staggering 40%. The dosage employed in many of the studies occurred in excess of 75 mg daily, which I think is a little high (even for me) based on commonly given RDIs. If I feel a cold coming on I typically reach for 25-50 mg of zinc per day. I also cycle off of zinc every couple of weeks as males have a greater risk for zinc toxicity as nature does not bestow upon us a zinc wasting monthly gift.

_Similar to treating influenza, an increased intake of probiotic lactobacilli can cut the duration of your cold by 2 days while also reducing the severity of your symptoms. Unfortunately, many of the studies on probiotic supplementation relate only to the young or the elderly, as these groups tend to become ill more often. With any luck however, more data relating to healthy adults will be made available in the near future, especially since this demographic is more likely to make use of the information. Little kids are too focused on dunkaroos and cooties to be concerned with illness prevention, while using a computer to gather information seems an impossible task, on par with driving at a reasonable speed, for most people over the age of 65.

While viral infections are not the sexiest topic out there, hopefully I have presented the information in an interesting enough manner to prompt readers to follow along and significantly reduce their sick time this winter. That being said, make sure that your illness-free time this winter is spent doing something preferably outside, and preferably awesome (or both). Sickness, James Chalmers disapproves.