If you frequently get sick, there may be a variety of reasons that are causing your illnesses. Seeing a doctor may be a good first step, particularly if your illnesses are of long duration or are occurring on a regular basis, but there are also some things you can look to in your life to see if your lifestyle or other causes may be influencing relatively constant contagion. Much also depends upon what type of illnesses you’re having.
When you get sick with respiratory illnesses or nasal congestion that don’t involve fever you might actually be experiencing allergies part of the time or all of it. Allergies that are untreated can seem very much like colds, and they can be pretty miserable to live with. They may also contribute to conditions like asthma or make people more prone to be asthmatic when they get common colds and flus. If you notice your illnesses seem to be worse when you go outside, or when you come home after a day at work, indoor or outdoor allergies can be the cause. Food allergies, especially minor ones, might make you feel unwell most of the time.
When you’ve ruled out allergies as a potential cause of illness, you may want to evaluate the conditions of your life. If you smoke, you will probably frequently get sick, and respiratory illnesses are likely to increase the more and the longer you smoke, since you kill off tiny cilia (hairs in the nose and lungs) that help to resist disease. Smokers also typically have low iron levels or anemia, which can make you more susceptible to germs. Excessive drinking on a regular basis might also be a reason you're frequently sick, since alcohol is essentially a poison that causes dehydration and can make your body weaker.
Poor diet can be another reason that you're frequently sick. Lack of essential nutrients may make your body less fit to fight germs. Eating a healthy, balanced diet and hydrating your body with plenty of water can help your immune system be stronger. Yet even with the best diet there are some other reasons why you may frequently get sick.
For instance, if you are a teacher and fairly new to teaching young children, you are likely to experience more respiratory illnesses. Parents of young children will also be more at risk for illness due to a fairly constant level of germ exposure in their homes. Though you may have evolved immunity to many respiratory illnesses that are out there, this immunity may not last for a lifetime, and there are so many germs your body has yet to encounter. Greater exposure to people who are sick on a regular basis often results in greater chance of illness.
Other factors that may might make you get sick include high levels of stress, undiagnosed depression, poor hygiene habits (especially not washing the hands after using the bathroom), low thyroid function, and conditions that affect the immune system like HIV, lupus, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, or rheumatoid arthritis. If you are getting sick often and don’t seem to be able to get this under control via lifestyle changes, or if you do feel run down, depressed or tired most of the time, this may be medical, and your answer to why you're frequently sick may be available through your physician.
