training & illness ??

[latelatebloomer]

O my invisible but wise women friends, riddle me this!

In this last year of discovering spinning, serious weight training, and now riding on the road, I am also getting sick a lot more often. Instead of an annual headcold as my only malady, I seem to be always getting or getting over some sort of respiratory infection and now sinus infections are getting added to the mix. This is alarming!

It is true that I am now working at a healthcare facility, but I am really careful about handwashing, and I'm getting sick more frequently than my coworkers who have poor diets and no exercise.

Any ideas? I have started to take an enormous multivitamin, echinacea, and oil of oregano. My life IS pretty stressful right now - my husband just finished grad school, debts are high, income low, and I'm working full-time, plus trying to promote my first children's book that came out this spring, and continue to write, and keep our little homestead with goats, chickens, and gardens together. I don't have much leisure/downtime. The bike & the country roads are my refuge.

To the good, I just had to exchange my new 2X Terry shorts for 1X, the hills around here are getting smaller, and so is my tummy.

Thanks for your help!

[DirtDiva]

Obviously, the first piece advice anyone would give you here would be to make sure you are eating and sleeping properly and generally taking good care of yourself to ensure your immune system has a fighting chance. However, I wouldn't underestimate the impact that working in a healthcare facility may be having if you have not been working there terribly long and given your immune system a chance to adjust. Although you may be fastidious about hand-washing, cold and flu type viruses survive for a considerable amount of time ouside the body (and on things like doorhandles) before they dry out and loose their infectiousness. (I doubt "infectiousness" is a real word, but y'all know what I mean.)

[swlsue]

Have you been to a doctor and had them look at your bloodwork?

[latelatebloomer]

Thanks, swlsue & tlkiwi - I did have a mess o' bloodwork done late last year that came back just fine, but you know, sometimes reading over one's message is rather enlightening. I'm going to get serious about giving myself a little more rest and relaxation. Clearly my body is insisting on it. I made a joke to a friend recently that the last time I saw my soul was Thursday last and it was headed south. Maybe that wasn't a joke. Thanks for the help.

[Dogmama]

Frequent illness is a sign of overtraining. You can overtrain easily when you add life stressors onto a heavy workout schedule. And, it sounds like you have a pretty stressful life right now. How about gearing down a bit - giving yourself a couple of days rest or active rest each week?

[bounceswoosh]

Frequent illness is a sign of overtraining. You can overtrain easily when you add life stressors onto a heavy workout schedule. And, it sounds like you have a pretty stressful life right now. How about gearing down a bit - giving yourself a couple of days rest or active rest each week?

I definitely second this. I had a goal of riding every day last year, plus some ice hockey and some martial arts and ... well, I had all sorts of symptoms of overtraining. Poor sleep. Frequent illness and injury. Constant fatigue. It sucked.

Here's a list of symptoms:

http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/i.../aa040600a.htm