Can Being Cold Make
You Sick
Q. Can you get sick just from being cold,
like sitting in an overly air-conditioned room or going out without a jacket?
Or do you need to actually catch a virus or somehow be infected?
A. There’s
no question that people need to be exposed to viruses in order to get sick. By
definition, a cold is a viral upper respiratory infection, so no virus, no
cold, said Dr. Stan Spinner, chief medical officer for Texas Children’s
Pediatrics.
“There
are a large number of viruses that can cause the common cold. That’s why we
catch hundreds and hundreds of them throughout our lifetime,” he said.
People
tend to link cold weather with colds, but that doesn’t mean there’s a cause and
effect connection, Dr. Spinner said. “These viruses that cause us to catch a
cold predominate during the winter months in this part of the world.”
Plus,
cold weather keeps people inside more. “We’re more likely to be in close
quarters this time of year, close together among those who are already sick,”
Dr. Michael L. Munger, a practicing family physician in Overland Park, Kan.,
said in an email.
Home heating and humidity may also play a role in winter health, Dr.
Spinner said. Running the heat to keep the house warm also dries it out — and
can dry out our sinuses, too. “When you don’t have good nasal mucus flow, it’s
harder for the immune system to work against the virus,” he said.
Research also
suggests that low indoor humidity may promote the transmission of flu. With
high humidity, flu viruses expelled in a sneeze, for example, tend to attach to
water molecules and may drop out of the air before they can trigger a new
infection. In a dry room, those flu viruses often continue to float around
until they reach their next victim.
There
are also some scattered laboratory studies that suggest being cold might weaken
the immune system, making us more vulnerable to those viruses. A 2017 study found that
immune cells that are chilled are less effective at
fighting off viruses, at least in a lab dish, making it "easier for the
virus to infect,” said Dr. Prasert Auewarakul, a co-author and professor of
virology at the Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University in
Thailand.
In a 2005 study by other researchers, college students whose feet were soaked in
cold water for 20 minutes a day were more likely to get sick than those not
exposed to the cold. And research in mouse
cells suggests that rhinovirus, the common cold virus, replicates faster at
cold temperatures, Dr. Auewarakul added.
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