Catching a cold
I got cold on Sunday when I stood outside in the rain in order to meet my parents whom I love and try not to meet indoors while the virus is surging in London. Afterward I felt sore, aches and pains, a runny nose. And I thought “it’s true, what my mum always said is true”. It’s good to wear a hat and gloves and thermals underneath my jeans and I’ve reached the ripe old age of 36 and the age of a global pandemic before realising it! It’s not like it hasn’t been mentioned before. My grandmother used to complain of aches and pains after catching a chill. I can see her in the room with the blue sofa, with a big blanket over her legs talking about how she needed to sweat the cold out.
Previously I guess I hadn’t thought much more about the mechanisms behind this, but now I’ve spent a year marinating in news about viruses and germs. And the theory goes that you need to catch a bug to get a cold. So why did I start to feel a bit achy after standing outside with the wrong shoes on a damp day in London in December? I’ve lived a pretty sheltered life in the last few weeks because of that other virus, my exposure to germs should be low. Perhaps I’m just getting old?
The internet has a lot to say on this topic. And I haven’t done any triple fact checking here, because I’m just doing this for fun. So proceed with caution, this is just stuff I’ve found on the internet.
Surprise, surprise there are many different studies and also different points of view. There is Wim Hof after all and people who jump into icy lakes and say they never catch a cold.
But here is one study by the Cold Centre at the university in Cardiff:
“The scientists recruited 180 healthy students who hadn’t had a cold or flu in the past couple of weeks and were currently symptom-free. Out of these students, half were given a cold foot bath for 20 minutes, whereas the other half stayed nice and toasty. As a result, almost a third (28.8%) of the students who got the cold bath ended up with a cold in the next 5 days, compared with only 8.8% of the students who sat twiddling their toes in the empty bowl.”
So what happened? The paper proposes that we all carry around viruses in our bodies during flu season, and if we get cold and wet (the damp seems to be a big factor) the blood vessels in our nose and throat narrow and that slows down the respiratory tract’s defences.
The study also showed that wearing a scarf over our nose and mouth, to keep those parts warm, is a good thing.
Mum was right! Stay warm everyone.
– Facts from here
– Pic by Birgitte Tohm.