It’s rainy season again with rain more often and the weather changing every day. It’s hard for us to avoid getting soaked by the rain. With weather fluctuation, sometime sultry, sometime hot and humid, our body cannot catch up with the change of humidity, causing an imbalance in our body. The change of humidity in the air also make germs and bacteria spread faster and easier, leading to many diseases. In addition to that, rain itself also contain many contamination and certain germs, which can also make you sick. Let’s see which common diseases may appear in the rainy season.
The first to be mentioned is definitely ‘Haemorrhagic Fever’ since there’s waterlogging to be seen almost everywhere from the frequent rain. Waterlogged conditions are the best place for aedes, the carrier of the dengue virus. If any members of your family, have high fever for many days, with a poor appetite, fatigue and drowsiness, they might have Haemorrhagic Fever. It is important to have them checked up for Haemorrhagic Fever for early treatment.
These symptoms may also indicate Malaria or Encephalitis. These two diseases are usually found in land with overgrown forest and mosquito as the carrier of the virus. Waterlogged conditions are also the best place for germs, viruses, bacteria, or even mold to grow, which can cause skin infections. The symptom for that is itchiness, bumps, purulent, or even bubonic appearance. Sometime there’s even rat’s excrement in warerlogged conditions that may cause a Laptospirosis infection. The symptoms include high fever, body aches and a poor appetite. The rain itself also contain germs, which may cause you sickness such as flu. When we are exposed to the rain, our hair will get wet and may further as sickness, but that does not mean that the germs get into our body through our head.
However, when our head is soaked by the rain, it will caused the temperature at the surface of the nasal mucosa to decrease about 1 – 2 Celsius. Such a decrease in temperature makes it suitable for germs, both virus and bacteria, to further grown. These combine with exposure and an extreme accumulation of germs at the nasal mucosa. When this accumulation is high, the nasal mucosa will be inflamed resulting as stuffy and runny nose. If such infections spreads to your throat, it will further result as throat inflammation. If dirty water happens to spill into your eyes or you touch your eyes with the hand, it may result as a Ciliary Infection.
There are other diseases that come with food and water contaminated with Escherichia Coli, a type of bacteria easily found during rainy season, which may cause you Diarrhea and Food Poisoning. More importantly, rain combined with higher than-usual humidity in the air can lead to a normal becoming pneumonia. We understand that this might sound a bit too scary for our readers; do not worry! We also have some tips for you to take care of your health during rainy season, which are easy to follow.
First start, the easiest thing that you can do is to wash your hands frequently because we definitely cannot avoid being exposed to these germs during rainy season, so it’s best to keep your hands clean! Secondly, try to drink clean water as much as 1.5 – 2 litres per day to keep the balance of your body temperature, decreasing the chance for your body to get infected. There are also certain foods that we would suggest you to eat which are Kaeng Som (sour soup made of tamarind paste), Tom Yum (spicy lemongrass soup) and Kang Leang (spicy mixed vegetable soup). These are foods with a spicy flavour, which help increase your body temperature and also contain lots of vegetables and herbs, which have high vitamin C. These will strengthen your body immune system.
There are also foods that we would suggest you to avoid, which are food that have a cool effect and have bitter taste because it will decrease your body temperature and also hard to digest, making your digestive system work even harder. Moreover, it is very important to have enough sleep, at least 6-8 hours per day. However, if you are one of those people who cannot get yourself to sleep easily, we would suggest you to eat a banana before going to bed because banana contained tryptophan, which helps your body relax, making it easier for you to fall asleep. Another thing is that we barely sweat during rainy season because of the high humidity level in the air.
Therefore, we would suggest you to workout harder, so your body gets to drive away the bad stuff in your body. Exercise/workout also helps the immunity of your body. This information has been provided by Healthlab and may not represent the opinions of Hua Hin Today.
