Why You Get Sick

In this post I will talk about why you get sick. I’ll stick to two of the basic germs - bacteria and viruses. Bacteria and viruses cause things such as the common cold, stomach bugs, influenza, measles, chicken pox and strep throat to name a few.

How Germs Spread

• Germs don’t move themselves
• Germs spread by people moving them
  • Think coughing
  • Think sneezing
  • Think preparing food for other people
• Germs spread by the environment moving them
  • Think a germ living on a surface that lots of people touch
  • Think a germ that is light and travels through the air

When people work and play together in groups, this provides the perfect opportunity for germs to spread.

Germs move from one person to the next person through a couple different ways:

Touching the germ

• Directly touching the germ on another person by shaking hands, touching their saliva, blood, vomit or eating something with the germ on it
• Indirectly touching the germ on something that’s been contaminated such as: touching a door handle or their coffee cup
• Once you’ve touched the germ, it then needs to enter your body by you touching your eyes, nose or mouth
• Rhinovirus, a common cold causing virus, can survive on hands for more than an hour
• Parainfluenza virus, the virus that causes croup in children, can survive on surfaces for up to 10 hours
• Salmonella can survive on surfaces up to 4 hours
• Norovirus, the virus that causes most stomach flus, can survive on surfaces for weeks

Droplet

• When someone coughs or sneezes, a germ can stay in the drops that come out their mouth and nose and can spread in the air up to 2 meters before it falls from the air
• A person who is less than 1 meter away can breath the germ in and get sick
• Or a person can touch the surface that these germs fell onto and get sick by then touching their eyes, nose or mouth

Inhalation

• Some germs are very tiny and can stay in the air for a long time
• The next person can unknowingly breath this germ in and get sick
• Influenza, or the flu, can stay in the air for several hours after an infected person has coughed or sneezed
• Measles can stay in the air up to 2 hours after an infected person has coughed or sneezed
• Tuberculosis (TB) can stay in the air up to 6 hours after an infected person has coughed or sneezed

Once you’ve been exposed to a germ, the germ needs to grow in your body before you begin to show signs of being sick. This is the time when you are sick but aren’t aware of it yet. This is called the incubation period. This is also when you can be passing germs to other people

You can pass a germ to someone else before you even realize you’re sick!

Each germ has a different length of incubation. Some incubation periods are as short at 1 day while others are as long as 21 days. Once the incubation period is over, then you start to feel sick. You’ll start to nice the signs and symptoms of the germ you’re infected with. Each germ has different signs and symptoms. 

You can continue to pass your germs to other people once you notice you’re sick. The word used to describe passing a germ to another person is called the contagious period. Each germ will have a different contagious period. Some contagious periods as short as a couple of days while others are as long as several weeks, even after you’re feeling better. 

So to get sick, you:

1. Need to come in contact with a germ
2. Allow that germ into your body
3. Have no previous protection (immunity) to that germ

Hopefully knowing how germs spread can help you avoid getting too many germs yourself. Just know that the most effective way to prevent germs from getting into your body is to wash your hands. Check out my blog post on when to wash your hands.

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