Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time. From startups to scaleups, online, in person and on the go. Shopify is made for

entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup.

Hello and welcome back to Ask Dr. Hazel, our mini episodes that drop each week in between our main episodes.

I'm your host, Dr. Hazel, and I'll be answering all your burning questions.

Thank you to everyone who sent in a question already, and if you would like to submit a question of your own to the podcast on any topic related to health, fitness, nutrition, please send your voice recorded questions to

info at thefoodmedic.com.com. So let's jump into this week's question. Hi, Hazel. Do you have any

advice for staying fit and strike training during long periods of illness? Because I love

strike training, but I'm a student and it's

winter and I feel like it's just one cold after the other and I really want to continue

straight training and I'm really worried that if I don't I'll lose all my progress so if you

have the advice I'd really appreciate it. Thank you so much for your question so when people

ask me if they should exercise when they're sick my my answer is always, it depends. It depends on A, how sick you are. And this will require a little bit of intuition on your part if you're struggling to get out of bed or simply carry out your normal day-to-day activities, then I would rest up. But if the biggest limiting factor is just a running nose, then some

gentle exercise should be okay. Generally, if your symptoms are above your neck, you should be fine

and not in your chest, but also using parameters like your resting heart rate can be helpful as well.

The second thing it depends on is the type of exercise. If you're not well, now is not the time

to try run your best 5K or do any heavy lifting. Any illness causes the stress on the body which kicks our immune system into action to fight it off. Exercise also causes the stress in our body, which isn't always a bad thing. It helps us to grow, adapt and become stronger. But when we're sick,

the stress of a tough workout can be more than our immune system can handle. You mentioned weight

lifting, which should be fine, but I would keep the volume and load low and opt for other forms

of movement like walking, body weight training and gentle yoga. Also ensure you're getting

enough calories and protein as that's really important

to maintain your muscle mass. I also want to flag that constantly getting calls or falling ill can be

a sign that you're over-training or under-fueling. So I would ask you to also take a step back

...