Day 34 - Exercise and The Sniffles

Check out my yummy tea and awesome new tea infuser!

Today was my first day back at synchro after winter break.

In case you've never worn a tight cap and goggles and been upside down underwater with congested sinuses, I've got to tell you that it is kind of painful! I didn't want to miss practice (because I will be able to make very few practices for the rest of the season due to rotations), but it probably wasn't the right time for me to be back in the pool.

Pool feet. Let's try not to get warts.

Nevertheless, it was really nice to see all my teammates (almost - Anna was missing) and our coach, and get in the water for a couple of hours.


I've done a bit of a preliminary lit search to try and find out whether there is evidence suggesting either that you should do physical activity with a cold, or that you should not. As I've mentioned previously, it seems like everyone's got a different idea about it, and google turns up a wealth of completely unsupported, uncited, and unscientific recommendations.

A quick PubMed search dug up a number of articles discussing immune function and physical activity, but very little about whether you should exercise with a cold...in fact, nothing at all.

I did find an interesting study that suggested that people who engage in high levels of athletic training have upper respiratory tract infections (i.e., colds) more often. Immune effects of exercise don't seem to differ between women and men, but may become more pronounced in people with particularly high training load (i.e., lots of physical activity).

Will exercise scare a cold off? Should you exercise with a cold? No clue.

Other authors completely disagree - this study suggests that individuals who are physically fit and active experience fewer colds and are sick for shorter periods. The authors of this study also assert that physical activity reduces the risk of upper respiratory tract infection.

It's hard to know what to believe.

In fact, whether physical activity helps or hinders your immunity to colds may depend on a host of poorly-understood individual factors

So, in sum, I am still completely in the dark about whether I should work out with a cold, and now I also don't know whether physical activity will keep me from getting sick or will result in me being sick more often.

Huh.

Side note: My legs and bum hurt from yesterday's workout - I definitely wasn't expecting that!