From A to Zee: A Health and Safety Perspective

Winter is coming... Ahh! A winter post! I'm so sorry. I know it's mid-September. It seems like once the State Fair hits, we can go from high-flying summer to the dredges of winter in a heartbeat here in the nearly Great White North. Fall is such a lovely season that's really too short around here, and sometimes it seems to not exist at all. But. You guys, it's Minnesota. Once September hits, all bets are off.  This happens, you know. Last January, the Saint Paul school district came under fire because they did not anticipate the strength of a winter storm,...

You may have heard that 98% of the human body is comprised of water. In an adult that number is closer to 60%. Despite that common misconception, our bodies do indeed need a lot of water and require that we replenish our water stores at a consistent tempo to that which we deplete it. Read on to see just some of the effects being dehydrated can impact your daily life.

The picture above is my grandfather, Gil Mathews, in 1973, shortly after he and my father, Chuck, opened Zee Medical Service in the Twin Cities. This is one of my favorite pictures, as it so thoroughly encapsulates the lore of this time in our family's history. 

It is estimated that there are 200 viruses that comprise what we commonly refer to as "a cold" or upper respiratory infection (URI). And while you technically can't catch the same cold twice as we develop immunity fending them off, these viruses tend to mutate, leaving us vulnerable to new strains of the same cold virus. Worst of all, it's been reported that flu viruses can live outside the body in some circumstances for up to 48 hours, and scarier yet, avian influenza was found to survive on surfaces for up to 6 days. 

That's uplifting, isn't it?

As the viruses of winter months are simply a fact of life, albeit a dour one, we thus turn our attention to prevention, and ultimately, relief.