Why Do We Get Sick “Out of Nowhere”? - August to September

Have you ever had one of those weeks when you feel perfectly fine, and then suddenly you aren't?

Maybe you wake up one morning with a scratchy throat, or your allergies suddenly decide to make your life miserable. Perhaps your digestion gets wonky, you develop a headache, or you find yourself absolutely exhausted even though you cannot point to anything that happened to make you feel that way.

I hear people talk about this all the time, especially when we move from one season into another. There is always a little bit of that, “Where did this come from? I was fine yesterday!” feeling.

One of the things I love about Ayurveda is that it encourages us to look a little farther back. Instead of asking only, “What caused me to feel bad today?” Ayurveda asks us to consider what has been happening in the weeks and months leading up to today.

What have we been eating? How have we been sleeping? Have we been under more stress than usual? Have our schedules been irregular? Have we been pushing ourselves? What is happening in the environment around us?

The Ayurvedic view is that imbalance often builds gradually. We may not notice it at first because the body is remarkably good at adapting.

We compensate, we adjust, and we keep going. Eventually, though, we can reach a point where the body has a harder time keeping everything in balance, and that is often when the symptom finally gets our attention.

Interestingly, modern physiology gives us another way of looking at part of this process. Scientists talk about the body's ability to continually adapt to changing demands, and they use the term allostatic load to describe some of the cumulative effects of repeated or chronic stress on the body's regulatory systems.

That is not the same thing as the Ayurvedic concept of accumulation, and I would never suggest that science has somehow proven Ayurveda. They are two different systems looking at the human experience through very different lenses.

Still, I find it fascinating that both encourage us to consider what has been happening to the body over time rather than assuming that every symptom began the moment we noticed it.

The Little Red Wagon

I have a little analogy I use when I think about this idea of accumulation.

Imagine a child pulling a little red wagon, and someone keeps putting bricks into it. One brick isn't a problem. The wagon can handle it. Add another one and another one, and it still rolls along just fine. We keep adding bricks because nothing appears to be wrong.

Then one day, we put one more brick into the wagon and suddenly the wheels come off.

We might look at that last brick and say, “Well, that's what did it.”

But the last brick wasn't really the whole story, was it? There had to be a lot of bricks in that wagon already for that one last brick to cause the wheels to come off.

I think our bodies can be a little like that.

We have a stressful week, and we handle it. We have a few nights of poor sleep, and we manage. We eat differently while we're traveling, get back home, get busy again, skip a meal here and there, push through when we're tired, and somehow we keep going. We are remarkably good at doing that, and most of the time we don't give it much thought.

Then something relatively small happens and suddenly we are sick.

The last brick gets the blame because it is the one we can see, but there were a whole lot of bricks already sitting in that wagon.

That is one of the reasons I don't think “I just got sick” always tells the whole story.

August Doesn't Just Disappear

This is particularly interesting as we move from August into September because August does not simply disappear when the calendar changes.

Here in Texas, we may still have plenty of heat in September, but other things are beginning to change. The light changes, the evenings eventually begin to cool, the days become shorter, and our schedules begin to shift. After the looser rhythm of summer, many of us suddenly find ourselves back on a much more demanding timetable.

From an Ayurvedic perspective, this is an important transition.

Ayurveda looks at the qualities of a season rather than simply the date on the calendar. Summer tends to have a lot of the qualities associated with Pitta, particularly heat and intensity. After several months of living in that environment, those qualities can begin to accumulate.

Now, before you start thinking that I am suggesting you have spent the summer doing everything wrong, that is definitely not where I am going with this. Summer is supposed to be enjoyed. We eat watermelon and peaches. We have cookouts. We drink cold things. We stay up later. We travel. We spend time outside. We enjoy ourselves. There is nothing inherently wrong with any of that.

The question Ayurveda asks is whether we have had enough opportunity to come back into balance.

Maybe you have noticed that you are running a little hotter than usual. Perhaps you are more irritable, your digestion is more sensitive, or you are noticing more heartburn, headaches, skin irritation, or inflammatory complaints.

Maybe you simply feel as though you have been running at full speed for months. Those are the kinds of clues I want us to notice, not because we need to diagnose ourselves, but because our bodies are constantly giving us information.

Then Fall Starts Changing the Rules

As we move toward fall, the qualities around us begin to change.

Things become cooler, drier, lighter and more changeable. In Ayurveda, these are qualities associated with Vata. You don't have to memorize that, and you certainly don't need to understand every detail of the doshas before you can use this idea.

For now, just think about what fall feels like. The air becomes cooler and often drier. The weather becomes more changeable. The leaves begin to move. Our routines change. There is more movement and activity as children return to school, work schedules pick up, and all those fall activities begin appearing on the calendar.

Vata is associated with movement and change, so you can probably see why Ayurveda considers fall a time when Vata can become easily aggravated. We are carrying whatever we accumulated during the summer, and at the same time we are asking our bodies to adapt to an entirely different set of conditions.

We change our schedules. We change our eating patterns. We change our sleep patterns. We often increase our mental activity, and suddenly we are rushing from one thing to another. We go from summer's “Let's see what happens today” rhythm to “Oh my goodness, look at everything on the calendar.”

Then we wonder why our bodies start complaining.

The Science of the Body Adapting

This is one place where I think modern science gives us an interesting perspective without needing to prove anything about Ayurveda.

Our bodies are constantly adapting to changes in our environment and our circumstances. Temperature changes, stress, sleep, food, exercise, emotions, daylight and daily routines all place different demands on our physiology. The body has an enormous capacity to adjust, and that ability is part of what keeps us functioning from one day to the next.

Sleep is a good example. We know that sleep and immune function are closely connected, and research has found that inadequate or disrupted sleep can affect immune responses and inflammatory processes.

That doesn't mean that one bad night's sleep is going to make you sick. It does mean that our patterns matter, particularly when they continue over time.

So imagine that we have spent several weeks sleeping poorly, eating irregularly, working too much and carrying a little more stress than usual. September arrives and our schedule becomes even more hectic. Then someone at work comes in with a cold, and a few days later we are sick.

We might say, “That's what made me sick.”

Maybe it was the final trigger, but it probably wasn't the whole story.

There were already bricks in the wagon.

This is where I find the Ayurvedic perspective so useful. Ayurveda encourages us to notice those bricks before we get to the point where the wheels come off.

So How Do We Make the Transition?

This is where Ayurveda becomes wonderfully practical, because I don't think we need to make the seasonal transition complicated. In fact, I would much rather see someone make a few small adjustments while they are feeling well than wait until their body forces them to make a dozen changes at once.

As August winds down, I might start paying attention to how much heat and intensity I am carrying. Am I still eating and living exactly as I did during the hottest part of summer, even though the environment is beginning to change? Have I been pushing myself because I feel like I have to squeeze every last bit out of summer? Have I been sleeping enough, or have I been treating sleep as the thing I will get around to when everything else is finished?

Then, as September settles in, I start thinking about Vata. This is a wonderful time to bring a little more rhythm into the day. I can eat at reasonably regular times rather than skipping meals and then eating half the kitchen at nine o'clock at night.

I can begin choosing more warm, cooked foods as the weather cools. If I have been living on iced drinks, smoothies and cold foods all summer, I can begin introducing more warmth and see how my digestion responds.

I can also start protecting my evenings a little more. Vata loves movement, and modern life gives us plenty of it. There is always another email, another text, another errand, another thing on the calendar. We don't necessarily need to eliminate all of that, but we can give ourselves some quiet space between activities.

We can create a reasonably consistent bedtime. We can allow our nervous system a chance to settle before asking it to sleep.

And, honestly, sometimes the most Ayurvedic thing we can do is go to bed.

I know that sounds ridiculously simple, but we have somehow managed to turn rest into something we feel we have to earn. We tell ourselves that we will rest when the work is done, when the house is clean, when the children are settled, when the emails are answered, when the project is finished and when we have finally taken care of everyone else.

The problem is that there is always another brick.

September Is a Bridge

I think we sometimes approach seasonal change as though we need to flip a switch. Summer is over, so now we need a new routine, a new diet, a new exercise program and perhaps a completely new version of ourselves.

I would rather think of September as a bridge.

We are gradually moving from the heat and intensity of summer toward the cooler, drier and more changeable qualities of fall. Our bodies are making that transition along with us, and we can make it easier by paying attention instead of waiting until something goes wrong.

So this year, instead of waiting until you wake up one morning wondering why you suddenly feel awful, try looking back a little. Notice your sleep. Notice your digestion. Notice your energy. Notice your mood. Notice whether you are feeling scattered, overheated, exhausted or simply out of sorts.

Those little changes don't necessarily mean something is wrong. They are information.

That, more than anything, is what I hope people take away when they begin learning about Ayurveda.

You don't have to become an Ayurveda expert to start using an Ayurvedic perspective. You don't have to memorize Sanskrit words or understand all three doshas. You can simply become a little more curious about your own experience.

Your body is constantly responding to the world around you. Ayurveda gives us a beautiful framework for noticing those changes and asking what we might do differently, while modern science gives us another way of understanding the remarkable adaptive system we live in every day. They are different lenses, and I think there is value in looking through both of them without requiring one to prove the other.

So as we move from August into September, don't think of it as starting over. Think of it as adjusting your load.

Maybe there are a few bricks you don't need to put into that little red wagon this year.

Maybe there are a few you can take out.

And maybe, if we pay attention early enough, we can keep those little wheels firmly attached and enjoy the ride into fall.