[Music] Welcome back to Coffee Break, the audio equivalent of their hot water bottle and your company of socks or best pair of slippers. Winter's definitely on its way if it's not been here already and so are the coughs, the colds, the aching joints and that urge to hibernate like a hedgehog until April. But standing well is not just luck, there are things you can actually do to help your body through this period of time. From keeping warm, moving more and topping up vitamin D to knowing when it's time to get help. Practical tips, no scare mungering, just solid advice. Come and join us for another Coffee Break. [Music] I'm Dr Jeff Ham and I'm Dr Sam again me. And this is season one of Coffee Break. We are two general practitioners from beautiful dorms at the United Kingdom and we are happy to have you here with us for another Coffee Break. In our show we give you helpful and useful health and wellness information in short and easily digestible episodes. That's right and hopefully in a fun and enjoyable way as well. In today's Vat Sea of Health information we hope to be your trusty island of reliable and impartial independent, unbiased information. And we may even have some guests with us to help. So sit back and enjoy. Hey Coffee Break. [Music] So winter brings with it lots of things isn't it? Lovely things, cold crisp sunny days, a red nose, but we also associate it with other things like illnesses, unfortunately it got cold sore throats, ear problems, there's horrible tummy bugs that we can get. Most definitely and there's always this thing about being actually the cold or not catch because there's always this connection between cold weather and being exposed to cold and getting ill or becoming ill. But why do viruses spread more easily during winter in these cold periods? Well cold drying conditions do help viruses thrive, don't they? They survive better and dry air needs to dry nose and that reduces the basic immune response. But also there's less sunlight isn't there? And if you listen to that episode of Vitamin D you'll know why sunlight support with Vitamin D and why Vitamin D is really good for your immune system. Indeed. So we're going to come onto lots of tips that we have come up with just to think about to try and stay well during the winter period. A couple of interesting myths just to bust, it's quite common for people to say, well if you wear a hat on your head to keep warm you will keep the whole body. It's not actually true, yes you do lose a lot of heat for your head but the point here is to wear sensible layers for the whole body isn't it? Yeah, yeah. So staying warm is key and wearing a perfect clothing. And that's really interesting as well because it was always thought that if you had a toss of whiskey or a nipper brandy that would warm you up and whilst it might make you feel warm inside at least temporarily it actually increases your risk of exposure to the cold doesn't it? It decreases your ability to sense what's cold it can stop you shivering and should re-activity to warm and it also dilates your blood vessels and therefore makes you lose more heated myth at heart if you say warm doesn't it? Yeah, absolutely. And the only other myth I thought was quite relevant actually is if you do develop a cold and what that cold is causing you to produce green mucus, green flem, green nasal discharge, the green or yellow doesn't necessarily mean you have a bacterial infection that requires antibiotics. That's right. The green is actually originates from iron breakdown of certain immune proteins. So don't necessarily think green equals our antibiotics. Think about the rest of you, how well are you feeling, how unwell have you felt for how long and then consider getting advice perhaps starting with your local pharmacy? Yeah, definitely. So as you said we've got some tips on general things you can do over the winter period that will hopefully help you stay healthy over the winter. And the first one of those is hand hygiene isn't it? It's really important when there's more and more viruses around that are thriving longer, that are surviving longer, especially for instance if you've got a running nose, cold weather gives you running nose, if your hands aren't clean, if you've got viral particles on your hands, rub your nose or rub your eyes, you're definitely going to increase your risk of getting infected aren't you? Yes. And as we all learned during COVID viral particles survive on surfaces don't they? So it's not just about someone sneezing in the same room as you, if you happen to touch a door handle anything around you and that has virus particles on you may transfer those to yourself and then catch that virus. And for those of you who were subscribers and listeners to our previous show you probably remember saying pretty much it. The end and start at the start and end of every episode don't touch your face. It became a bit of a catch phrase for us. So hand hygiene. Isolation proportions again a little bit of a continuation from COVID so if you're unwell consider staying at home. You necessarily have to. If you're not going to stay at home, if you've got a mild cold for example think about the environment you're going to think about whether you can wear a mask to reduce transmitting virus to others. And diarrhea and vomiting highly recommended to actually isolate for 48 hours until you're clear of symptoms because it's 48 hours after the illness you are still highly contagious. The other thing that happens during the winter is air humidity changes so indoors air humidity will decrease the air gets drier particularly with central heating or just because we don't open our windows as often and as the air gets dry we're more likely to see viruses transmit. Definitely. And the drier warmer air that we see in our homes and buildings in winter as we put central heating on also not particularly related to winter but also increases our risk of developing nose bleeds doesn't it? That's why we see this big increase in those bleeds as we head into winter. Absolutely. So important to think about airing a room open those windows even if it's a cold day because you will probably find actually your indoors will be less humid than the outdoors. And whilst we say open windows of course it is important to get nice fresh clean air in and to make sure we're not too dry in our houses and our rooms it is important to say warm isn't it? And it is suggested that 18 degrees should really be the minimum temperature looking at for a room however it's important to warm your body and not necessarily try and warm the room you're warming yourself. That's the thing that keeps warm. Yeah absolutely. Particularly in this time when fuel cost rising consider warming the rooms that you're in and avoiding unnecessary heating parts of the house that you weren't being and focusing on as you said keeping your body warm. Yeah definitely. Immunizations this time of year certainly COVID immunizations, fluid immunizations really important to consider take up any immunizations you're offered to keep fit and healthy and to minimise the chance of contracting those illnesses. Yeah absolutely. And then moving on from practical things so keeping your body active is quite helpful. We might all be more prone to sitting on our surface for longer periods for example or because we're indoors more moving left just because the space is smaller and there's strong evidence that keeping active is good for immune health, bone and muscle health and keeping active is good for mental health which is another important area to think about was the winter months are around it's darker the way we connect is different and the winter isn't it? Keeping active helps maintain our close ability and if you think the winter months okay maybe not quite so much here on the South Coast but you're more like to have icy conditions you're more likely to be at risk of falling in tripping and if you have maybe become a bit deconditioned from not being active you're more likely to be more likely to fall over if you've not got that strong cost ability to stop you falling over. Yeah absolutely. With the cost of fuel you might have some concerns about finances. You probably will find that your surgery has access to a social prescriber who can help you and advise about this but other contacts that there is the cost of living support website which will provide some information and citizens advice as well. Could be contactive. And this is a good time of year isn't it? It's a bit of an MO2, a bit of an overhaul of what's in your medicine's cabinet at home. It's probably a good time to check our thing still in date in your cabinet and how do you got everything you need rather than waiting until you actually need it and might struggle to actually get out and get some of these things. So what about winter supplements then? Is there any benefit from taking those? We've done a very good episode on vitamin D. Have them with absolutely. Yeah. All the answers to vitamin
in that one. But what about other multivitamin, some, you know, if you talk that well, you know, it's winter, should we take a, should we take a multivitamin now or a winter health tab? Well, there are many variables to this, but the research seems to suggest that most supplements will not make a huge difference to your winter health, except for possibly bitminscy and zinc, which both have been shown to help your body stave off viruses in the way that viruses attach to our, the cells of our body, bitminscy and zinc help to reduce that ability of them to do that. So it could be worth taking a bit ofinscy and zinc supplement during the winter. As with everything, taking within the advised dosages, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. There's no benefit from invertebrating or any sort of, yes. So unfortunately, you have succumbed to winter health illnesses, where do you turn to if you are poorly this winter? Well, we are going to come on in some separate episodes, some of the common perhaps winter illnesses, but so if you've got a common symptom, perhaps a cold cough that's been persisting, mild tummy-boke symptoms, you might want to speak to a pharmacist or try one one online initially. If you're, if you're feeling very unwell and you've got a chronic condition such as COPD, then it definitely is worthwhile speaking to your GP or clinician, definitely. This isn't something you should try and manage on your own. Yeah. And for those of patients who have rescue packs, it's always important to lay okay, initially, you've had to start your rescue pack, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Mental health, as I mentioned before, really important to take that seriously and you may be aware of certain charities that are available, but Silverline is an example and the Samaritans, and as I mentioned before, GPs do have social prescribers linked to them and we can find ways of connecting you with others, including volunteers, for example, to help with talking about your mental health. Yeah, definitely. And as you said earlier this financial advice line to citizens advice teams and sorts of support out there, especially in winter which is traditionally more expensive in terms of looking after yourself, heating your homes, fuel bills, there is advice out there definitely. And also do keep an ear out for upcoming episode on Norah virus known as the Winter vomiting bug, which will also give you a bit more refreshment. So Jeff, any take home messages on winter health? I think my take home point is that it isn't just the cold weather that gives us winter illnesses. It's how we respond as well. It's what we do to our homes. We put the central heating on. We dry out our houses. We heat them up often, probably warmer than you would normally tolerate in summer to be honest, in cases. Yeah. And we therefore help create really good environments for the viruses for those illnesses, don't we? There are things that we can do that might seem counterintuitive, like opening the window on a cold day, getting the air in. It sounds very old-fashioned a bit of your air, anything you need to get the air on a winter's day, but actually there is some treatment. Yes, absolutely. And just keeping some basics. So proper hand hygiene, being aware of the surfaces you come to contact with and the places you've been. My take home would be, actually, we mentioned in passing the medicine cabinet, I think just being prepared with some basics is a good idea. We've mentioned COVID a few times, but there were periods where shelves were suddenly empty of certain remedies because certain viruses were going around, so just having the basics available is good. Hydration, we haven't talked about water, but a number of take home products are just such mentioned, keeping your hydration up is really important, this has been an episode of Coffee Break. We hope you have enjoyed it. And if you have, then we hope you will join us again for another Coffee Break soon. Remember, if you do want to get in touch with us, or if you have any ideas or suggestions then please feel free to email us at the show at
[email protected]. You can listen to us and subscribe to the show on any of the podcast platforms and via your computer, smartphone and home smart devices. We have used a variety of resources for the information in the show to try and ensure that it is up to date and the most applicable. We have also put any important links we've discussed in the show notes. Coffee Break is a coffee break production and is created written and hosted by me, Dr Sam McGinley and me, Dr Jeff Ham. The editor and producer is Dr Jeff Ham. All the content we provide in the show is for general informational purposes only. The content does not constitute medical or healthcare advice. The content is valid in England at the time of recording. The content should not be relied upon as a substitute for professional medical or healthcare advice applicable to your specific circumstances. We advise that you always consult a qualified medical professional for any medical matters.
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