Why Don't I Get Sick From Going Out In The Cold?

[LisaL]

In high school I often woke up late so I didn't have time to dry my hair. So it was January -4 C and every other day I was walking outside to my campus and some of my hair had actually froze. Those years I caught fewer colds.

 

I also got caught in freezing rain one night (going to a restruant) and it was a 30 minute walk back to shelter. There were 50 MPH winds also and my clothes were saturated with water as the rain wasn't expected. I got so cold I felt dizzy and it took an hour to stop shivering, but I didn't catch a cold. I'm skinny so I feel the cold more. During middle school I'd often wear nothing but a thin polo shirt, even in the winter when it was snowing. In those 4 years I only caught 2 colds.

 

I have a low white cell count because I'm anemic so if anyone's immune system would be suppressed by weather it should be me. I had asthma in highschool so even in the winter I'd have my bedroom windows fully open all the time to help me breathe. I didn't get any more colds.

 

Wikipedia said a famous painter named Maurycy Gottleib committed suicide by roaming around town at night, in July. It said because of this, he caught a cold and died. I also read in the Daily Mail a man got pneumonia after he walked in the rain for 5 minutes.

Edited July 9, 2015 by LisaL

[LisaL]

So what caused Maurycy's Gottleib's 'fatal cold' ? Stress? was the fact he intentionally wondered around town at night in the summer coincidental? He made it obvious in letters he was trying to make himself ill. his death is listed as suicide.

[fahrquad]

A cold is caused by the Rhinovirus.  Exposure to cold has nothing to do with getting sick.

[sanctus]

But the virus survives longer in the cold without a host, so there is a higher chance of inhaling rhinos when it is cold ;-) So it is not the cold but it is the cold...

[billvon]

 

I have a low white cell count because I'm anemic so if anyone's immune system would be suppressed by weather it should be me.

Your immune system is not "suppressed by weather."  I have no idea where you got that.

 

In the winter there are more people inside (=more possibility to pass pathogens) and less sunlight (=less disinfectant.)  So there's more risk in the environment.  Nothing to do with your immune system being weaker when it's cold.

[CraigD]

Prolonged exposure to cold temperatures can cause mild hypothermia (core body temperature 35 to 37 C). I suspect prolonged mild hypothermia reduced the body’s ability to produce an adequate fever response. Fever may aid the immune response to infection (this is not an uncontroversial claim, as using drugs or body cooling to treat fever doesn’t clearly impair the immune system), so it seem possible that, while not suppressing the immune system, going out in the cold may make you more likely not to quickly recover from mild infection – that is, to get noticeably sick.

 

Sources: https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/phys_agents/cold_health.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fever .

 

In high school I often woke up late so I didn't have time to dry my hair. So it was January -4 C and every other day I was walking outside to my campus and some of my hair had actually froze. Those years I caught fewer colds.

My long hair, vague, hippy-ish moral aversion to energy-hungry electric hair dryers, morning running and showering and waiting on buses and trains gave me years of frozen hair, to no ill effect, other than terrible split ends.

 

Wet hair in cold but not freezing temperatures, on the other hand, can be brutal. Wet hair and cloths can be fatal. In my teens, I and a friend got caught far from shelter in a steady spring drizzle, and got so cold we thought we were going to die. Had the clouds not broken and the sun come out and warmed us, I think we might have.

 

Neither of us got sick from this brief hypothermic ordeal.

 

No sources for this – consider it mere anecdote.

[fahrquad]

I just got over the flu, and today was the first time I had been out of the house, except to go outside for a few minutes to smoke when I had the strength to get up from the couch.