The last couple of days I have been in bed with a fever. It finally broke last night and so I feel a little bit better. I still am exhausted especially in doing the simplest activities. Who knew that a shower would feel like a workout?

The thing about fevers is that it doesn't take that much of a body temperature increase for the bugs and viruses to be killed. Your body was designed for that. The increase temperature of the fever stops the replication of viruses so that our immune system can attack what is currently assaulting our bodies and not be overwhelmed with a new host of reinforcements.

When you think about it, many things can be impacted by just a simple or slight change. One small change does have impact on other things. According to earthday.org "if the entire U.S. did not eat meat or cheese for just one day a week, it would be the equivalent of not driving 91 billion miles – or taking 7.6 million cars off the road. Or as an individual you ate one less burger a week, it would be equivalent of taking your car off the road for 320 miles." That's because meat production produces 1/5 of the green house gas emissions.

There has been other types of research about small changes. Studies have show that a modest weight loss- 5% of body weight- produces heart health gains, lowers diabetes risk, reduces risk of sleep apnea, lowers cancer risks.

There are also the interesting stories of major flubs, all brought to fruition by small problems. In the 1998 Mars exploration, they missed the target for failing to convert English to metric units. The original pictures sent back from the Hubble telescope were fuzzy. All due to a 1/50th of human hair width problem of one of the mirrors.

What does that have to do with us?

I've been thinking about the zero waste advocates (see February 6, 2017 post). They seem so hard core. Is it really feasible for all people to live that way? I am just grateful that my eighty-eight year old father is eating, much less worrying about the packaging it comes in.

But we can do our fair share. If we all tried to reduce our waste- making choices to avoid plastic and reuse what we have, it would be beneficial to all. If we all choose to make small changes the impact can be large. Of course we all have to figure out what works for us and our family. But wouldn't it be empowering to know that we have contributed to change and we didn't have to do too much?

What about you? What types of small changes do you do that have seen big impact? Is there something small you can commit to today? Could you monitor it for a month and see if there are any changes?