A healthier outlook is the right medicine

I noticed that the chemists this week were all full of people holding tissues to their noses and looking for their first cold cures of the season.

We get the first bit of cooler, wetter weather and people are claiming flu, coughs, colds and head colds.

All that wind and rain last week surely can’t have wafted bird flu in from paradise?

I really don’t think they can all be ill.

Perhaps it’s psychosomatic – getting up when it’s a bit darker and watching the nights drawing in might just be helping folk imagine themselves into a wintry state of mind.

Are we lulling ourselves into sickness and snot simply because we’re dreading the thought of five months of winter?

We all know that illness can be affected by your thoughts.

Particularly traumatic experiences in life can literally turn people’s hair grey – or make them lose weight or become chronically sick with a whole variety of illness.

So is the same thing happening with the change of seasons on a lesser scale?

They say there’s something called Seasonal Affective Disorder, which is down to a lack of sunlight.

But surely that isn’t restricted to the wintertime with our odd climate? And anyway, that doesn’t give us a cold, just makes us glum.

Back-to-school germ sharing must have finished by now. That annual phenomenon is good news of course, because it hardens off the immune system to battle the dangers ahead …

The clocks haven’t even been put back yet. It’s not been wellie weather for schoolkids. We haven’t had a truly cold night.

Yet everyone seems to have had their heating on.

When I was a lad even the schools weren’t allowed to fire up the boiler until after half-term week.

Maybe the warm environment, combined with people staying in and sitting inside steamed-up public transport is the key?

Or perhaps the first warning shots from mother nature that winter is finally on its way reminded people to stock up on their vitamin C and menthol pastilles ... just in case.

That rush to the pharmacy counter might have combined with the snifflers and splutterers to cause the queues this week.

Whatever it is, I’d wager that a healthy outlook on life might count just as much as any over-the-counter proprietary brand.

First published in the Lincolnshire Echo.