Exercise 'can prevent a cold', a study shows | Hacker News Reader

Exercise 'can prevent a cold', a study shows

bbc.co.uk

23 pointsmayutana27 comments

I've noticed the exact opposite myself, and I've actually managed to take advantage of it sometimes.

I climb rocks, and a few times I've had days where, for no reason I could explain, I have performed far above my normal abilities (1). Big days, where I've sent routes that were way above my head. Routes that I couldn't pull individual moves on when I came back to them a week later.

Then the next day I would be clobbered by a cold so violent that I'd be bedridden for an entire day.

I chalk it up to the body knowing that a cold is on the way and storing up all the immunities, defences, and reserve energy that it will need to fight it. If you time it right, you can steal all that stuff and channel it into one day of hard climbing. Of course then when the cold does come, the body has nothing to fight it with so you get crushed.

Considering how good it feels to be that on form, even just for a single session, I think it's actually worth it.

(1) If you climb, you'll know that it's a very measurable sport. If you can boulder a certain grade, you can get on a given problem and have a reasonable expectation of being able to work it out. Or alternatively, you can know for a fact that you could train on this one particular problem for an entire year and never top out. So when you're having a day like the one I describe above, it's the equivalent of showing up at the gym one day and finding you can suddenly bench press 50 pounds more than yesterday.

I had a wonderful run a few Sundays ago (well, wonderful for my middle-aged self), rolled home feeling great, then woke up in the middle of the night with a hot raw patch in the top of my mouth and a couple of days of misery coming on.

But I suspect it wasn't the cold coming on that did for me, on the one hand, more likely exposure to somebody with a new and improved bug a day or so before. And on the other hand, I'm not sure that co-workers who got to listen to me cough would have considered the run worth it.

According to this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/opinion/05ackerman.html, it may be better to give you body nothing to fight it with. The colds don't do much harm to your body, they just trigger an immune response. A weaker immune response results in a more pleasant cold.

I compare it to "the calm before the storm". It is also the time when I stock up on nighttime cold meds.

> So when you're having a day like the one I describe above, it's the equivalent of showing up at the gym one day and finding you can suddenly bench press 50 pounds more than yesterday.

So it's not so far out of the ordinary to be unexpected?

In my experience, those sorts of variances are pretty common with lifting and endurance running. Especially for non-professional level athletes.

I haven't lifted weights in probably 15 years, so you'll need to modify that number to something that makes sense.

In Climbing, I know that when I'm on form I can generally get a route graded 7b+ after a couple hours of working it and a few redpoint attempts. The few 7c routes I've done each took about a dozen days of work spread out over the course of a month.

The route I did on one of my pre-cold days was rated 8a+ (though it was likely a bit overgraded), and I got it second go. Like I said, I came back a week later, and I couldn't even do the single hardest move in isolation.

So, that far out of the ordinary.

Important caveats: 1/ Too much exercise increases the chances of catching a cold as well as increasing the severity (there is research on this) 2/ Gyms are full of people and you touch a lot of the surfaces - so that may offset the effect (this I'm guessing)

People who exercise are more likely to eat healthy and take care of their body in other ways.

Did they people who made the study correlate for that?

Also it says "those who merely think they are fit enjoy the same lower risk". How fit I see myself has a lot to do with how often I fall ill.

I would personally vouch for it. Not just cold, I have got rid of nagging headaches and other ailments too after starting on a regular exercise regime

What about diet?

> Lead researcher Dr David Nieman and his team, from Appalachian State University in North Carolina, say bouts of exercise spark a temporary rise in immune system cells circulating around the body that can attack foreign invaders.

This makes an interesting contrast with other recent reporting on colds and the immune system, such as http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/opinion/05ackerman.html?_r... which says (correctly, AIUI) that the immediate cause of cold symptoms isn't the infection itself but the body's immune response to it.

Resolution: http://blogs.plos.org/bodypolitic/2010/10/06/how-not-to-figh... -- a more active immune system at the moment of possible infection may help you not get infected, but a more active immune system while you've got the infection may make things worse. (And: "the immune system" is a complicated thing, and the bits of it that make a cold worse may not be the same as the bits that make you less likely to get one.)

That probably means it's a good idea to not exert yourself once the cold has hit.

This is actually a little paradoxical, because numerous reports have shown that strenuous exercise depresses the immune system by increasing glucocorticoid levels. The odd thing is that glucocorticoids cause an increase in circulating neutrophils, but some think that they are actually less available to fight infection, because usable neutrophils are found lining the postcapillary venules. All told, studies of the cold paint a complicated picture.

Interestingly, the immediate aftermath of a workout is suppressed immune function. (http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/82/5/1385)

But it does seem reasonable that someone living the broadly healthy lifestyle of a person who gets a good amount of exercise would also find themselves less susceptible to colds etc...

Seems kind of obvious, exercise strengthens the body and promotes general health. What next? wrapping up warm can prevent a cold? Slow news day?

One of the most poorly named entities I know of is "common sense". It's extremely uncommon. I can't tell you how many times I've went somewhere in winter and seen idiot mothers with their baby sitting in the stroller with it's belly showing. It's not a bad thing to keep repeating and demonstrating these kinds of health facts no matter how obvious they should be.

While exposing a baby to cold certainly isn't a good thing to do, I think colds spread in the winter by people being indoors so much. You catch a cold from another human, not from the cold wind.

Of course but getting too cold weakens your body and makes you susceptible to cold, etc. It can also lead to problems with the organs later.

> Of course but getting too cold weakens your body and makes you susceptible to cold, etc.

I seem to recall a big discussion on this somewhere on the internet a few years ago. From what I recall, there was very little science at all to back up the theory that you catch the common cold from getting a chill. At least to me, there doesn't seem to be a logical connection between the two.

The best reason I can think of is, when it is cold, everyone tends to spend more time indoors with the doors closed, giving a virus much more opportunity to spread amongst people. Another theory had something to do with nasal linings drying up (?) in the winter, making one more susceptible to infection.

If the chill --> catching cold theory was correct, wouldn't it seem likely that when you get really cold, as in shivering your ass off uncontrollably, wouldn't you be extremely likely to catch a cold? And I know anecdotally that that simply isn't true.

Is there even a reasonably logical physiological theory to backup the chill --> catch a cold theory, or is it simply an old wives tale?

There's also the issue of less sunlight in winter, therefore less Vitamin D.

You're confusing the reporting of science with science.

The news article contains what (the media think) the public would want to know of the results.

The actual study (I'm not sure I can find it, but it appears to be a follow on from: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/497802 ) will use scientific methods to work out why this is true, not just that it is true.

I can verify this as I was the super sickly kid at high school. When winter arrived, so did the illness period for me. Then I started practising some martial arts in university and my immune system got pretty strong. Hardly had any critical illnesses since then.

When I have a cold (sneezing, coughing), I go running anyway (like I do almost every day) and I feel much better for the rest of the day; most of the symptoms disappear, even when running in winter :)

Being healthy requires the combination of a good diet, adequate clothing that suits the weather and exercise.

To add my own anecdotal evidence: I have experienced the same relationship.

Cleaning your hands when you get back home after having been outdoors - a very basic hygiene measure - does a WHOLE LOT more, I would say. Interestingly, in contrast to the article, the direct effect of a session of physical activity is a short suppression of the immuno system that leaves you temporarily more sensitive to the rhinovirus, should you be carrying it at the time.

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