Spent yesterday sick at home. I was expecting to get sick, since I'm winding up a super-busy month at work and history shows that I almost always get sick right after a long period of stress or excitement. Curious as to whether this is a common medical phenomenon, I googled "sick after stress" and found a zillion articles saying that, yes, this is a well-established thing. One article had a scientific explanation:
"The stress onset may have caused his cortisol levels to rise, suppressing his immune system. In its weakened state, he may have been exposed to a variety of pathogens, which were then able to enter and proliferate within his body. Although this pathogen may have been present, his immune system was also constantly being signaled by cortisol to suppress inflammation, explaining why he didn’t see any symptoms during his exams. However, after his exams were over, the combination of pathogens living in his body along with absence of the anti-inflammatory signal may together have caused him to experience symptoms of the inflammatory response—sore throat, stuffy nose, and fever."
It makes evolutionary sense. If your body is busy fight-or-flighting, you probably don't have time to nap and drink chicken soup.
I still remember how, when I went home for Christmas break freshman year, I got incredibly sick for a week. It felt exactly like my body just let everything it had been holding in hit it at once.
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