Does anyone else get sick after exercising?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m not talking about total exhaustion or nausea following a hard workout.

A day or two after an especially hard run or bike ride, do you come down with symptoms of a cold or bug?

I have had the symptoms of a very frequent virus-y bug or faint cold all my adult life. Six to twelve times a year, I get this bug, and it’s very real. I get chills and fever and achey skin and that hard-to-describe sick feeling - “malaise” a doctor called it. I’ve been to the doc an he referred me to an immunologist, and neither could discover any reason I should get this.

I only recently started to notice that I seem to get these symptoms within a couple of days after some sort of “personal best” in exercising. Say I rode my bike further, or jogged longer, or went up to the next level in weightlifting. I Googled a bit, and found several articles talking about how runners often experience frequent colds and bugs when they’re training especially hard. They discussed how an overload of stress hormones laid you open to infection from virus which were already present in the body. It’s starting to make sense, but I’d like some input from Dopers on this.

How about it? Does anyone else experience this?

2

My ex used to puke after his daily run. Every day. He’d hop over the fence, go on a run, hop back into the apartment, run to the bathroom, and puke. You could wind your watch by it.

3

Kalhoun, have another read of the OPs first line ;).

Teela, I do find that if I have the initial mild symptoms of a cold and then do a bit of serious exercise I’ll invariable get sick properly. If I lay off the exercise and rest as well as I can then I’m more likely to shake the bug before it takes hold. So yeah, it happens to other people too.

I always figured that my body was expending too much energy on muscle recovery or perhaps the deep breathing involved in exercise helped spread the bugs into my lungs.

4

[Emily Letella] Nevermind. [/Emily Letella]

5

A friend with chronic fatigue syndrome gets cold- or flu-like symtoms after exerting himself. It’s rarely an actual cold, but the symtoms are similar. I’ve experienced the same during a period when life was really stressful and I exercised heavily at the same time. The symtoms disappeared when I got rid of the stress elements, though.

6

Yep, I am the same way. TMI ALERT!

I find that it stops if the change is permanent, but if I just decide to get some extra exercise I spend the next day feeling feverish and shitting out my colon. The same things happens to me if I make huge changes to my diet, too. If I go from eating whatever in larger portions to cutting back on portion size and replacing stuff I would normally eat with fruits and vegetables I get really sick. It takes about 2 weeks for my body to catch up and learn that this is normal now. It took many years of starting diet and excersize plans and stopping about a week into them because I just felt so damn sick before I realized this is just what happens when I diet and exercize and knowing that I have to accept the illness symptoms for a while to be able to follow through with any kind of attempt at a healthier lifestyle.

7

Are you perhaps exercising outside and exposing yourself to something you’re allergic to? I’m allergic to dust mites and can wipe myself out like that for a few days if I do a thorough housecleaning with sweeping, vacuuming, and/or dusting.

8

I don’t get snuffly or sneezy and only rarely do I sense a bit of snottiness when one of these bugs is commencing. The most common scenario as I can recall (and I am now going to keep a diary regarding exercise and bug onset) is that when I’m feeling especially fit and strong and as a result I achieve a longer, stronger bike ride than the last time, down I come with this bug after a day or two. I have the bug right now and I did a long and strenous bike ride the day before yesterday. It’s a PITA because it always sets me back in my progress toward fitness.

9

Well, my main symptom when I do that isn’t necessarily snuffly or sneezy, either. That’s what made it darn hard for me to figure out allergies were behind it. There may be a sneeze or sniffle while I’m actually cleaning, but I get a day or 2 of that malaise thing, just like you describe.

10

No, but I do get oddly bloated after a workout. It’s not just my imagination - I’ve measured my waist before and after, and there’s a definite difference for a while. Our bodies work in odd ways.

11

Another chronic fatigue sufferer here. I describe it as “being allergic to exercise”. I have to very, very carefully ration how hard I exert myself. Anything more than a little more than I’m used to, and I collapse the next day.

12

I have had the symptoms of a very frequent virus-y bug or faint cold all my adult life. Six to twelve times a year, I get this bug, and it’s very real. I get chills and

Omg! I have bein going to the doc. For months now they ran a million tests on me my liver was inflamed and my enzymes were up(the exact same thing has bein happening to me ill exercise and a day or two later I’m getting sick exactly! Like you said it doesn’t last long the next day.I’m fine but I want.to find out what the hell is wrong with me please email me or som10

13

If you think you have the flu or other symptoms like this and you are healthy otherwise, this is called OVERTRAINING.

Feeling like you have the flu is the exact way professionals describe overtraining

You’ve drained your body too much and you HAVE TO REPAIR IT.

This is big stuff and I’m assuming you are healthy otherwise and don’t have the flu.

If you’re regularly working out and feel like this, it means you’ve totally depleated your body.

So you need to repair it.

This mean STOP WORKING OUT. You need to take seven days off. No working out. Continue your diet as normal but put a bit more on carbs and but back a bit on fat and protein. Make sure you are taking a multivitamin as well. No need to go overboard, just find a good multivitamin like “One-A-Day” and take that or the generic form of it

After seven days you can start working out again. For the next seven days only do about 25% of your routine.

The next seven days you up it to 50% of your routine

The next seven days you can up it to 75% of your routine.

It is REALLY IMPORTANT (<-notice caps) you pay attention. Flu like symptoms after working out (without any medical reason), means you are not doing your work outs correctly and you body is kicking back.

You need to repair it. Your body currently is not repairing itself correctly, so if you fail to stop and let it, you’re just doing more damage.

Muscles repair when they are at rest, the tendons get more flexible after they are used and allowed to rest.

A lot of people who work out are afraid to stop as they think it’ll get them off schedule.

This couldn’t be more wrong.

I work out a lot and I’ve had this happen to me. You need to stop.

Surprisingly enough a month from now you’ll be in BETTER shape, as your body will have had all that time to repair itself.

14

I just posted this thread last night: Why do I get a cold after I exert myself past my limits? - Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share - Straight Dope Message Board

I had a full blown cold last night. Drank lots of water, went to be early, and it’s gone today! Weird.

15

It sounds similar to opiate withdrawals, even the comment about the bloating. I guess you could make the link between your body releasing opiods after a hard workout and then suddenly stopping and your symptoms. You could just be extra sensitive to this.

16

I felt like I was getting a cold over the weekend, but then that went away. But after my workout Sunday night, felt cold-ish Monday morning but the symptoms went away by evening. Worked out again last night, and am feeling fine today.

17

I don’t think you understand I quit exerciseing for months then I just started up I was taking supplements so I’m gonna quit doing that but its not normal to literally run a fever cause that’s what happens you no maybe your right I hope your right but its bein six months!

18

Yeah exercising makes me sick. I have postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome and when I exert myself too hard (which isn’t very hard at all) I get pallid, my blood pressure drops, and I drop like a rock. I deal with it by super hydrating and sticking to aerobic exercise that doesn’t have me upright, like mounted bicycles or rowing machines. Still, sometimes it gets the better of me and I have episodes when I nearly pass out, often after getting up from a rowing machine. It freaks people out sometimes and it is really annoying having to explain how I am actually fine and they can leave me alone.

19

Wow, old thread.

I still haven’t found out why I feel frequently sick. I’m going to a new doctor, and as soon as she heard me complain about it, she promptly did an exam of my nails and scalp and face. This is just what the immunologist did. They are searching for signs pointing to lupus, of which I have about 50% of the symptoms, according to an online test. However, blood tests rule it out. I’m no doctor, but I’m thinking this still might be something in the immune disorder line. I think this because now I have frozen shoulder joints, and some medical thinking is that these are caused by an immune disorder.

The quest goes on.

20

Well I don’t no how I ended up getting Like this I use to never be like this at all they said that my liver is inflamed and I don’t want to think that I can’t exercise that’s all I did. And all I have to deal with things