hi everyone,

 

I hear from my wife very often : sister's sick - fever , mother's sick - fever, housekeeper -sick, niece - fever(all living in different houses)  it seems never ending.  

 

Is it easy to avoid getting fevers\chills\sickness on a regular basis by sensible eating and healthy lifestyle? Or is it just part of living in tropical zones such as Thailand?

 

thanks for your thoughts,

[cynic mode] Are these illnesses accompanied by a request for funds? [\cynic mode]

 

Our family are disgustingly healthy, obviously the occasional sniffle but rarely anything serious. In 25 years of living in the Far East I can count "serious" illness on one hand and only one instance in Thailand.

 

Buy them a thermometer.

 

My partner regularly claims to have a fever when feeling under the weather.  He never actually does, as a thermometer now proves.

 

I think it's just a cultural, or possibly, way of describing oneself as feeling unwell.  One dictionary describes the relevant Thai word as "fever; a temperature of the body; sickness", so it doesn't simply mean pyrexia.

Many of these 'fevers' were preceded by a bout of extracurricular Mehkong whiskey downing. I know a guy in Issan and he lives with his wife's family in Nakhon Pathom....they are always getting pills to cure their fevers but he says they pretty much start drinking at noon and don't stop until the bottles are empty, and then rinse and repeat the next day, never connecting the drinking to their felling like crap all the time.

 

 

I also get the impression the fever word pften means more of slightly unwell/out of sorts than actually having a fever.

3 hours ago, lopburi3 said:

I also get the impression the fever word pften means more of slightly unwell/out of sorts than actually having a fever.

Exactly.

 

And when they do have a fever it is most often a common cold or flu, which in Thailand tends to go round especially when the weather changes, but no more often than in the West.