It's just a cold. But even though I know I'm not horribly ill, I feel this overwhelming need to skip work, ignore my family and retreat to the far corner of the sofa.
I'm not being a wimp, it turns out. Those feelings are a real thing called "sickness behavior," which is sparked by the body's response to infection. The same chemicals that tell the immune system to rush in and fend off invading viruses also tell us to slow down; skip the eating, drinking and sex; shun social interactions; and rest.
"Those messages are so powerful they can't be ignored," says
Philip Chen
It might behoove us to pay attention. There is plenty of evidence that having a cold
impairs mood
But for most people, having a cold does not equal "take the week off." And that means many people work sick, even when it can put others in danger.
A 2015 survey of
food workers
The vast majority of health care providers said they were worried about letting down colleagues or patients if they stayed home. Other reasons included fear of being ostracized by their peers or because other people showed up to work sick. "We all feel pressured to deny our own needs (often giving up meals, bathroom breaks, and yes, caring for our own illnesses) in order to meet the high pressure/high demand/productivity of the health care system," one doctor wrote.
And this is despite the fact that numerous outbreaks in health care facilities have been caused by infected workers.
More than half of the people in the Children's Hospital
survey
Animals also exhibit sickness behavior; a pet that stops eating and becomes lethargic is almost certainly a sick pet. Scientists have come to think of this as not just an annoying side effect of illness but a
well-evolved survival strategy
"That makes evolutionary sense," says
Eric Shattuck
Shattuck has been trying to figure out how people interpret the signals of sickness behavior and how we choose to act on them. It looks like the answer will be: not very well. When he asked students how they respond to feeling sick, "Some people are super-hypochondriac; the minute they're feeling a little under the weather, they're bundled up." But by and large, he says, people try to ignore the cues of sickness behavior unless they are so sick they can't get out of bed. "There's what I suspect is a very cultural pressure to perform and to perform well, especially for what we consider minor illnesses."
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