Blame it on El Nino

Headache, sore throat, chest pain and aching limbs; no need for a specialist diagnosis, I was down with spring ‘flu. On Tuesday I began to feel ill. I’d probably caught the bug from T who started hers last weekend and has been off work all week with it. I rued my luck, we were booked to be away in Galway for the weekend; now paracetamol and throat pastilles were my companions.

I sat in an armchair in several extra layers of clothes with a blanket tucked around me. I drank peppermint tea, watched daytime TV and read the newspaper. One article described some new medical research that believed our immune systems to be seasonal: boosted in the winter and reduced in the summer. This seasonal variation was reckoned to be evolutionary from a time when surviving the winter was touch and go for our species. The downside for us now was that more inflammatory markers in our bodies when the immune system was cranked up could lead to other problems such as heart attacks, strokes and depression.

I thought back to the last time I had a ‘flu bug. It was October last year. And wasn’t this a normal pattern? Didn’t I always catch a virus around the start of the academic year? I’d put this down to coming into contact with students and all the new bugs they brought with them from their travels. So, after the fine early spring weather, had my immune system begun to wind itself down and I’d been caught out by the return of cold and damp conditions?

‘Isn’t the weather terrible,’ said a friend, ‘one minute you’re roasting, and the next the wind is cutting through you. I don’t know whether it’s summer or winter.’ In another part of the same paper, I read that a significant El Nino was under way this year. This major reversal of warm and cold currents in the Pacific hadn’t happened for the past five years. The article went on to explain that in years when El Nino had taken took place there was increased instability in weather around the world, including severe floods and droughts.

After a few good summers, we look to be in for a very mixed one. We should expect our immune systems to be confused. As will be deck-chair and ice cream sellers. Nothing for it, I thought, but to sit tight, keep reading and wait for better weather. I pulled the blanket closer, supped my tea and took another paracetamol.