Health Wanted: Radiation

The Episode

Do you have acne? Low energy? Stinky feet? Ugly face? Crossed eyes? Well have we got the cure for you: radioactive decay. 

This week on Health Wanted, we’re putting on our lead aprons to look back at the history of radiation as a cure-all, including an interview with Timothy Jorgensen, author of Strange Glow.

Listen now

The Listener Questions

Is it normal to get sick when I start going to the gym again after a break?

This is something quite a few people report experiencing, popularly known as "barbell flu." And it doesn't only happen after a break, it can happen after strenuous workouts generally.

While it hasn’t been specifically studied, there are a few theories for what could cause it.

The most likely cause is over exertion:

• You take a few weeks off and think you can just jump back in where you left off.
• You workout a bit too hard, maybe forget to hydrate, and it makes you feel ill.

There’s also some research that after prolonged, strenuous exercise there’s a dip in immune function which can potentially leave a “window” open for viral or bacterial infections, which the gym is full of. Close quarters, heavy breathing, and skin contact on shared equipment can all contribute to an increased risk of infection and illness.

So if you are heading back to the gym after some time off, ease in. Make sure you hydrate, wipe down equipment, and wash your hands.

If you are a regular gym goer, make sure you give yourself recovery time or your body will make it for you.

When I'm sick, can being around someone who is more sick than me make me sicker?

We don't typically see that when two people are infected with the same illness, one can make the other more sick through exposure. You’ve already started mounting your immune response in this case, and we don’t have evidence that adding more of the same virus will make anything worse.

In fact, hospitals sometimes use a process called “cohorting,” which is where you keep patients who are infected with the same organism together to prevent it spreading to the uninfected. That practice has not proved to increase illness in people already hospitalized.

The issue of viral load is more important when it comes to your first exposure or severity of individual illness.

Plus, there’s more than just viral load that contributes to disease severity. One person being sicker could just be due to differences in immune response.
 

Catch all the listener questions and Laurel’s answers on the full episode of Health Wanted by:

• Streaming at wabe.org or the WABE app
• Subscribing on Apple or Spotify
• Watching on WABE's YouTube channel