June 14th, 2009 
admin It all starts with a sore throat that slowly develops through the day while you are at work. By the end of that day, you are certain that you are coming down with something, but you will see in the morning if you can work the next day assuming your employer even offers the option not to. This is but one familiar scenario faced a billion times annually in the US in the ever-so-common process of “coming down with” the common cold.
Unless you are the bubble boy living a life of complete physical isolation from the natural world, you will get an occasional cold. If you have young children, expect the frequency to shoot way up as they are exposed to various bugs before inevitably passing some of them on to you. That being said, there is a point at which each of us should consider how often we are getting colds and whether our lifestyle and stresses are playing havoc on our immune systems and general health.
It has been known since the 1980′s that stress can reduce the immune system’s effectiveness in keeping us from becoming ill and more recent research has identified more specifically that chronic stress is the real culprit. On the other hand, those occasional short bursts of stress on the system can actually boost immune system effectiveness for a short while and are not generally something to worry about. So what are the sources of chronic stress that turns us into sneezing, coughing, watery-eyed zombies?
There is no doubt that work-related pressures can cause stress on our immune systems. So too can financial issues such as the job losses, unmanageable mortgage payments and large unexpected expenses that are so frequent in this battered world economy. Relationship issues can also take a heavy toll on our systems. Often forgotten, environmentally-related stresses such as air, light and noise pollution also sap the power of our immune systems. Related to all of the previous contributors, poor sleep and poor diet will inevitably send our immune systems into the gutter.
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