Why Do You Keep Getting Every Cold and Flu That Goes Around?
Can I be honest with you for a second?
If you feel like you catch every bug that goes around, the moment someone sneezes near you at work, you're flattened for a week, or longer, I want you to know something: your not alone, and iIt is a sign that your body is asking for support.
And the good news is, there is a lot we can do about it.
You're busy, capable, and running on empty
The women I work with in clinic are are busy, capable, and doing an enormous amount - for their families, their careers, their communities. But doing everything for everyone else, for a long time, takes a physical toll that most of us are never taught to recognise. Chronic immune vulnerability, that pattern of getting sick repeatedly, taking longer to recover than you used to, or never quite feeling well, is one of the most common things I see. And it almost always comes back to the same root causes.
What is actually driving it
Your immune system does not operate in isolation. It is deeply connected to almost every other system in your body - your gut, your adrenals, your sleep, your nutritional status. When one of those pillars starts to crack, your defences drop. When several of them are struggling at once, your body simply does not have the resources left to fight off what is coming at it.
Here is what I look at when a woman keeps getting sick:
Iron and zinc levels. These two nutrients are absolutely critical to immune function, and they are among the most common deficiencies I see in women. Even a mild deficiency, the kind that might not flag as anaemia on a standard blood test, can quietly suppress your immune response and leave you more vulnerable than you realise.
Gut health. Around 70 per cent of your immune system lives in your gut. If your microbiome is depleted from antibiotics, stress, a diet high in processed foods, or years of digestive symptoms, your immune system is working with one hand tied behind its back.
Cortisol. When you are chronically stressed, and most of the women I work with are, cortisol stays elevated. And chronically elevated cortisol actively suppresses immune function. This is why so many women get sick the moment they finally stop and take a break. The body has been holding it together on stress hormones, and the second the pressure lifts, everything comes out.
Recovery deficit. Sleep is when your immune system does its repair work. If you are not sleeping well, or not sleeping enough, your body is not getting the window it needs to rebuild and stay resilient Poor sleep in women often has an underlying hormonal or physiological driver that needs to be addressed.
This is not about taking more supplements
I want to gently push back on the idea that immune support means loading up on vitamin C and zinc lozenges at the first sign of a sniffle. Those things have their place. But if you are getting sick repeatedly, what your body is telling you is that something deeper needs attention.
True immune resilience, the kind that gets you through a whole winter without being flattened, comes from building a strong internal foundation. That means looking at what your blood work is actually telling us, addressing the state of your gut, supporting your stress response, and making sure your body has the raw nutritional materials it needs to do its job.
It is not complicated. But it does need to be personalised. What depletes one woman's immune system is not necessarily the same as what depletes another's.
What this can look like in practice
When I work with a woman who is in this pattern, we start by looking at the full picture, not just her symptoms, but her history, her blood work, her digestion, her sleep, her stress load, and what she has been eating. From there we build a plan that actually targets the root cause rather than chasing symptoms.
For some women that means targeted nutritional support to replete key deficiencies. For others it means a gut restoration protocol. For others still, the most important work is around stress physiology and helping the nervous system down-regulate so the body can actually rest and repair.
Often it is a combination. But the results, when we get it right, are genuinely significant. Women who have been getting sick every few weeks start to notice they are getting through winter without a single cold. Their energy lifts. Their recovery time improves. They feel like themselves again.
You do not have to just push through
If this resonates with you - if you are tired of being the one who always gets sick, always takes the longest to recover, always ends up on antibiotics - I want you to know that this is addressable. Your immune system is depleted. And depletion, with the right support, can be turned around.
I work with women in Shellharbour, Wollongong, and across the Illawarra, as well as Australia-wide via telehealth. If you would like to work together to get to the bottom of what is going on for you, I would love to hear from you.
Book a consultation: https://emily-gardem-nutrition.simplecliniconline.com
Em x
