The most likely explanation for this correlation is low serum vitamin D status due to insufficient exposure to sunlight during winter months.
Mainstream medicine believes that the reason there are more colds in the wintertime is because people stay indoors more, so they are in close proximity to others and therefore spread more viruses back and forth. I find this explanation incredibly stupid because if anything, more time spent indoors should equate to LOWER viral transmission rates since you are less likely to come into contact with infected strangers. Also some regions in the southwestern U.S. get so warm during the summer months that people spend more time indoors than they do in the winter, but summer isn’t “cold season” in these places either.
Indoors with other people who spend part of the day indoors with other people in other locations. If their co-workers have a cold, you will get it, and spread it to your co-workers. No strangers required. People who actually spend their winters as hermits do have fewer colds.
Winter or summer you’ll get most your infections from people you know, not strangers, and in winter you spend more time cooped up with them.
In addition to what you listed, there are a lot of things at play. Runny noses due to the cold. Lowered immune systems due to the cold. Longer airborn survival during the day due to less sunlight/more cloud cover… I do not think it is one single thing
At work, you basically have the exact same exposure to your coworkers during the wintertime as you do during the summertime, so no difference there.
In your home, you share your living space with your family. Regardless of whether it’s summertime or wintertime, you are going to be exposed to your family’s germs at some point. You are going to touch the same doorknobs that they touch and you will breathe in the air that they exhale.
All the cold weather does is cause people to spend more time at home instead of going out. Going OUT is where you pick up the infections. Have you ever heard of anyone contracting gonorrhea while sitting at home on their couch. No, because that would be incredibly stupid. No different for colds and flus.
Big difference between a sexually transmitted disease and an airborne virus.
Also, in September almost everyone between the age of 4 and 18 goes to school (and a good number of the population older then then that as well) where they all sit, in a crowded classroom, with a bunch of people that they haven’t seen in several months. Lots of new germs moving around there that they can bring home (which you then bring to work).
Sometimes there’s a difference between ‘weather’ and ‘seasons’. Meaning maybe colds spike during fall and winter not because it’s cold out (as old wives tales would have you believe) but rather because that’s when kids go back to school. Maybe if school started in June. Summer would be flu season.
When do flu and colds spike in the southern hemisphere? And do they run the school year during the same months as the US?
If that was the case colds would get worse the further north you get in your hemisphere. There would be virtually no colds in southern Florida, the Mexican border states, etc. Nudists and sunbathers would never get colds. People with dark skin would be more susceptible to colds than those with light skin living in the same area. Are all those things the case? I don’t think so.
Our school year runs from late Jan/early Feb to late Nov/early Dec. And yes, we get colds and flu more in our winter than in our summer (says he, having just come off 2 summer colds in a row). So that again points to closer association with assorted people as being a trigger.
Latest data, according to what I remember of “Ah-Choo! The Uncommon Life of Your Common Cold” by Jennifer Ackerman, is that the biggest times of the year for colds are early fall and January. Everybody thinks colds are more common in the winter because the Januaray cold peak comes right when the winter weather is most intrusive and annoying, so we associate winter weather with colds, but the association between cold weather and cold infections isn’t really that great.
As for the real reason, the thinking is that the fall peak is explained by the start of the school year, and kids passing around all the viruses they’ve collected over the summer (adults collecting them on summer vacations may also be a factor). In January, both kids and adults tend to travel to visit family and bring back new and exotic strains of viruses with them, then share these gifts with grateful friends and coworkers.
According to the book, few researchers think vitamins, sun, or temperature has anything to do with colds*. Dry air (both outside in the cold, and inside in radiator-heated buildings) MAY have some effect in making the nasal passages more susceptible, but the effect is fairly minor.
*There is evidence that vitamin C can help prevent/limit colds, but only for people doing extreme exertion in cold weather. So if you’re not training for Olympic cross-country skiing, then don’t bother with the OJ.
I’ve heard this before, but really? If that’s the case wouldn’t there be a spike in all diseases? A few years ago, it was posited that you find flu more in cooler temperatures because. . . the virus thrives best on cooler temperatures.
Hey, you’re the one who has the novel theory. You’re the one who needs to present the proof. Let’s look at what Askance said:
[ul]
[li] There is less sunlight the farther North you go, so people get less Vitamin D. If the lack of Vitamin D is a cause for the increase amount of colds, then you’d think there would be a correlation between the number of colds and the latitude.[/li][li] People with dark skin get less Vitamin D from the sun. That is true (they also get less exposure to ultraviolet rays, so they get less skin cancer too). So, there should be a correlation between skin color and colds.[/li][li] Nudists and sun bathers do get more Vitamin D, so they too should suffer from fewer colds.[/li][/ul]
It all sounds fairly straight forward and logical to me. And, it should be relatively easy to find such statistics too. Show a correlation between sun exposure and colds, and you have another bullet point proving your theory.
And, as for Cecil, he said in his column Still, most flu outbreaks peak in January or February. Why? Figure that out and you may be hearing from the Nobel committee. which is another way of saying, no one, not even Cecil knows the right answer.
As the article points out, most people with colds don’t go to a doctor, so we don’t even have solid statistics on the number of people who get colds during the winter vs. summer. You sneeze, have a runny nose, and feel miserable in the summer, it’s allergies. Same symptoms in the winter, and it’s a cold. Or, as the article points out, maybe not even that:
Respiratory infections, setting aside colds and flu, seem to be more common in winter–but some think that’s because of misdiagnosis. For example, what may appear to be sinusitis–runny nose, congestion, and so on–in fact may simply a result of “cold stress.” Cold stress is a direct bodily response to cold (like shivering, say), not something caused by germs.
I’m not knocking your favorite theory, but to simply brush off valid questions as half-baked is downright disrespectful.
What are you, some sort of self-appointed junior moderator?
Above I presented ample evidence to suggest that vitamin D moderates immunity, including immunity to colds and flus. Cecil didn’t mention this, but most likely that’s because his column was written nearly 20 years ago and very little was known about the role vitamin D plays in immunity at the time.
Handy how you dodged the call for evidence. Indeed, establishing a relationship between latitude and cold frequency would make a huge difference. Correlation does not mean causality.
Did you read the OP? In it I presented the results of a STUDY (not speculation as to what the results might be is someone decided to conduct a study) that linked low MEASURED (not assumed) vitamin D status and upper respiratory tract infections.
I’ve brought science to the discussion. You’ve brought nothing.