We all remember our mother’s telling us that we would “catch your death of cold” if we ventured outside insufficiently bundled up.
Nowadays, we know that the reason colds are more common in the winter is not related to exposure to low temperatures, but to the tendency to stay inside in close contact with each other, making transmission easier.
My question is…
Besides the obvious, like hypothermia and frostbite in extreme cold, are there any health risks associated with exposure to cold weather?
And…
What about areas where the winters are mild and people stay inside in the sweltering heat of summer? Do these areas experience increases in viral transmissions in the summertime?
She said “Catch your death of cold,” not “Catch your death of A cold.” She meant you would freeze to death from the cold in general, not you would catch a cold and die from that.
Marge: “You know, Homer, it’s very easy to criticize.”
Homer: “Fun, too!”
The reason colds and flu are transmitted more in the wintertime is because people tend to hang out indoors at close quarters, being exposed to one another’s germs. Unca Cecil said it in “The Straight Dope Tells All” so I know it must be true. By the way, if you really want to catch a cold, try attending a Byzantine Catholic or Greek Orthodox church on a regular basis. By the time you get done kissing the icons, gospel book, chalice, ciborium, and cross that everyone else has kissed, you can wind up with a doozy of a cold. Father Francis came in with a some kind of respiratory infection last month and infected half the congregation. It took me almost two weeks to get over it.
I never could get the hang of Thursdays. - Arthur Dent
I think saying colds are caused by “germs”, not cold is stupid. “Germs” are all around most of the time (except maybe in Antarctica), but when you do something that suddently lowers your temperature for a significant period of time, your system is apt to let the “bugs” “bite” you. When you speak of “the cause” of something, you speak of the proximate cause of it, not various ultimate causes or unavoidable ones. I don’t have a cite, but I’m sure you can find one.
Interestingly, the Inuit (Eskimos) are exposed to extremes of cold during the winter months, but are not especially prone to catching colds or flu *unless they congregate indoors[/]. The extreme cold of the Arctic (and Antarctic) seems to strain the cold/flu viruses as much as it does the potential recipients.
Computers in the future may weigh no more than 15 tons.
-Popular Mechanics, 1949
Yes to Ptolemy Cesarian by Juius Ceasar. Thus the name. He was a bastard, so technically “Cesarian” is hismiddle name so to speak, or just a title, but yes Cleo says he was by Ceasar. Killed as an infant
ok, this conversation has shifted from how cold temeratures give you colds, to if Cleopatra was a mother - yes she was a mother, by the way.
but, personally, I catch colds from school, for obvious reasons - I go outside all the time in cold weather without a jacket, and I never get sick from that I get sick from being in areas that have a warm temperature, and are crammed with miserable kids who don’t want to be at school, and have bad hygene when it comes to sneezing and coughing, and such.
that’s how you get colds. bad hygene…hee hee hee…
But Mothers are wrong when it comes to something related to this subject - they always used to tell you to cover your mouth when you coughed or sneezed. Well, it’s better to cough and/or sneeze out in the open, as opposed to covering your mouth. Why? airborn germs have little or no chance of making it to someone or something else to infect it. you have a better chance of getting sick if you have hand contact with a person who sneezed and/or coughed on their hands…if they didn’t wash their hands, that is, which they most likely did not.
oh, and mothers aren’t always right anyways, and I should know because we have two bets running against each other, and I know she’s wrong for both of them (why do u think I made the bets in the first place?)
I’m not weird, I’m just Gifted…okay, so I’m weird too…
~I’m 15, people, but don’t doubt my intelligence~
*fLoWeR cHiLd, 2nd generation…
“Im not opinionated, Im just always right.” (c)Me
Your suggestion, of course, assumes that the material that you cough will come out in aerosol form that will evaporate and dissipate into the æther, harmlessly. This is not, however, what generally happens to the stuff that is coughed or sneezed.
You have it partially correct. You should probably refrain from coughing directly into the palm of your hand where the germs will sit expectantly until they can migrate to a new host when you hand something to your next victim. However, the better alternative to coughing into the air might be, for example, to cough into the crook of your arm.
Coughing into the “open air” tends to put the little critters on objects that are down-wind or below you: desks, pencils, the stove, etc.
The body strives to remain at a constant temperature (I believe most people consider 98 degrees or thereabouts to be common), By exposing yourself to the elements in cold weather you ARE putting stress on your body, it has to work harder and use more energy to keep the temp that nature demands. Does this mean you are more likely to be weakened to the cold or flu ? Maybe slightly but probably not enough to matter. Oh, and as far as the Inuits go, now come on they have lived in that environment for thousands of years - there is such a thing as adapting.
