When I was a kid I was never allowed to play outside in the rain or cold because according to my mother “I might catch my death”. In reality, playing inside instead, as opposed to going outside, probably increased my chance of catching a cold.
So does being exposed to cold for an extended period of time make you more susceptible to a viral infection or not?
Despite those two links, I did read recently that cold weather does lower your resistance.
My mother has a rare disease called cold- induced autoimmune hemolytic anemia, which means that her immune system destroys her own red blood cells when she is exposed to wintry temperatures. It sounds made up, but it’s real and she’s been documented in a medical journal. She was advised to move to a warm climate, which she refused. Every winter she suffers debilitating anemia and needs transfusions and iron infusions…so I suppose the immune system can be influenced by temperature.
It would appear at first glance that if cold weather does suppress the immune response, that in colder months there would be general increase in various disease diagnoses, not just cold and flu.
In my opinion, this is one topic in which science has done both a poor job of describing and dismissed obvious evidence to the contrary because they missed the forest for the trees in cliched terms. Mothers are right to be worried because there is a strong association between cold weather and illness even if no one can explain exactly why that happens. It is probably true that exposure to cold itself in isolation will not make you ill. You can work in sub-zero refrigerators all day long even during the summer and will not get sick from that alone.
However, it doesn’t follow that there isn’t a very strong correlation between the cold and flu season and the colder months. There obviously is and it isn’t wise to be too cocky about why that may be. Many scientists and doctors hypothesize that it is simply because people stay inside more and spread infections around but that doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny either as a major factor because it also applies to areas where it doesn’t get that cold and people engage in outdoor activities all year long.
That fact is that the first person answers this question definitively will probably win a Nobel prize in Medicine because no one really knows why it happens.
I haven’t read the study yet, but this made the rounds of the morning talk shows recently:
Common Cold Could Be Prevented By Wearing A Scarf Over Your Nose | HuffPost Life
Cecil on the subject:
It’s all down to SAD - Seasonal affective disorder.
Cold weather means more people inside together in sealed up buildings and homes, sometimes with ventless combustion devices and reduced oxygen. Though with ever growing use of A/C this trend is slowly waning. Also the cycle of wash time between what you wear in the summer tends to be shorter then winter especially with things like jackets which are rarely worn in the summer at all. Back before domestic hot water and central plumbing, winter washing was a real chore and avoided till it was really needed.
Also there is a big difference between being ‘in the cold’ and being cold.