It’s all around New York City right now. This awful flu that leaves no part of your body untouched. Irritating, isn’t it? I just was hitting my stride with an easy 50-mile bike ride followed the next day by a 12-mile trail tempo run at Rockies. Both seemed absolutely effortless. Instead of building on that with a great week of training, I’ve been limited to getting excited if I can sleep for two to three hours at a time before I’m forced to wake up, and sit up vertically while I allow my sinuses to drain either by themselves or through some mechanical facilitation.

I haven’t taken any antibiotics this time around, I guess for two reasons. The first is that the flu is more likely than not a virus against which antibiotics are relatively useless, which leaves the sinus infection as the only other target. The problem with antibiotics is that they create forced Darwinism in the wrong direction. Given that the human body is not comprised of one single species but a community of multiple species all living together, where the number of visiting species cells outnumber our own, there is a constant battle going on between good and evil, where more often than not, good holds a very fragile advantage.

But what happens when a particularly virulent strain enters the fray? Well then the balance gets a little out of whack and at the top level we suffer through the waging war. If we are otherwise healthy, our good side fights back fiercely and eventually, hopefully, it wins and erradicates the unwelcome attacker. Antibiotics, however do little against the viruses, but against invading bacteria, they can be particularly effective against all but the most resistant. And therein lies the problem. Antibiotics, especially broad general types destroy everything, the good and the bad, leaving us completely defenseless. That means that only the bacteria that are resilient enough to get past the antibiotic survive and it is they that then replicate, build homes, schools, Coffee Beans and Jamba Juices while hanging out until the next opportunity to attack. Only this time, the antibiotic we used previously will be feckless. Some researchers believe that the appendix isn’t a useless gland at all, but rather a super creator or at least a repository of probiotics, that replenishes the good troops in our digestive tract after a particularly fierce battle to reinstate that fragile balance.

Our body’s homeostasis is maintained through this give and take, and while it sucks to go through it, being sick is part of the process of getting stronger. The downside is that in our culture, we really aren’t given the time or the flexibility to simply rest. In today’s competitive work environment, leaving for a week only give the hyenas reasons to come sniffing around. Knowing this is happening adds to the stress on our already weakened system, further beats us down, and hinders our ability to repair and heal. The good news is that not being able to sleep allows me to wake up at 3:00am after a few hours of restless sleep and post to my blog. See there’s a silver lining in every rain cloud.