Running with a head cold
What does the research say?
As it turns out there is not much research on this subject. The research that has been done showed that there was no measurable difference in exercise ability between people with colds and a control group without the colds. There was also no difference in recovery times from the colds between the two groups – although the exercisers reported feeling better.
The conclusion from these small studies is that there was no measurable impact when exercising with a cold to either the exercise or the cold.
This was for a head cold. Head colds are common ‘above the neck’ symptoms. There is no study data but most institutional opinion is that you shouldn’t exercise when you have ‘below the neck’ symptoms like aches, fever or chest colds.
Based on what I could find there is no compelling proof for anything medical practitioners say in this regard one way or the other. There is hearsay and old wives tales. It may be true, but it’s not tested or proven.
First, you won’t find a control group or a test subject group of people training hard at 50ish miles a week with speed, tempo and long. Most of these exercise studies are not done with ‘serious’ endurance athletes. They are done with non-athletes or casual athletes who jog on treadmills or spin on stationary bikes. It’s really not a good comparison.
Second, no one ever defines what a ‘cold’ is. Are we talking about the sniffles? The full-on body flu? That awful chest infection where you cough up the paisley colored balls of phlegm? A sinus infection? An intestinal flu? What the heck do we mean by ‘sick’?
We humans mostly get bacteria and viruses. Bacteria are single celled organisms that are very robust but can be cured by antibiotics. Antibiotics can mess you up too because they kill off a number of good bacteria that allow us to do normal things like digest food. Be careful exercising with antibiotics in your system because they will affect your energy level and immune response.
I would avoid exercising with any significant medicine in your system. Even over the counter cold remedies will suppress immune response and can be dangerous for athletes. I ran a marathon on Prednisone once and it was awful.
Viruses are very interesting because they are just little scraps of genetic material and have to hijack a host cell to reproduce. They enter the host cell and tell the host cell to reproduce copies of the virus. When they have a big pile of copies they cause the host cell to burst, thus spewing hoards of virus particles all over the vicinity.
When you get that sore throat it may very well be thousands of your mucous tissue cells exploding. Antibiotics do not treat viruses. For the most part there is no treatment except chicken soup. Most common colds are caused by the rhinovirus. So deal with it.
Many times the viruses creates a opening in your immune system for a bacteria to set up shop. Many times when you have one of those progressive awful colds it may actually be a few serial infections of different types.
There are rare situations where viruses can get into your heart and kill you when you exercise. Doctors will particularly caution people with heart murmurs, (like me), or other known heart abnormalities.
Should you exercise when you’re sick? I think this is another one of those areas that you are going to have to figure out for yourself with your own machine on a case by case basis. Should you run with a cold? I think it probably depends.
I’ll give you my personal experience. I have trained hard through many a cold and flu season. I have trained and raced through different forms of ‘sickness’.
My first observation is that I don’t get sick, or as sick, when I’m training at a high level of fitness. Before I started running marathons I would get sick with a full-on, carry-a-box-of-Kleenex, cold twice a year like clockwork. Once in the spring and once in the fall.
I noticed that when I started running spring and fall racing campaigns I just did not get that cold. If I did it was mild and fleeting. My theory is that high level training increases your body’s immune system. I also theorize, if you clinicians out there are looking to run a study on something, that the raising your body’ temperature and ramping up your cardio for an hour or so a day creates a hostile environment for bugs and they don’t get a chance to settle in.
Those times when I was sick and was confronted with the question of whether or not to workout I mostly always chose the workout. In most cases this would make me feel better in some cases it would not.
My experience supports the ‘above the neck’ theory. Head colds tend to get flushed out by a work out and don’t affect you mightily either way.
Whereas the ‘below the neck’ part of it I’ve found true as well. Running with a chest cold has made things worse. Uncontrollable coughing fits on the treadmill is one fond memory I can do without.
If you are sick you need to get more sleep and in general take better care of your machine. I think you can still exercise with caution, especially if you’re in the middle of a campaign. There’s no shame in backing off a little or taking a couple days off to rest.