Should You Exercise While You Are Sick?

Colds and Flu

A common question among medical professionals and fitness fanatics worldwide is whether or not you should continue with your fitness regime when you are sick with a cold or flu. Interestingly enough the answer is not as simple as one might think. Traditional wisdom is that if you have any sort of symptoms resting is the key to recovery. Have a cough? Take the day off and spend it in bed. Feeling a slight body ache? Take a day or two off of work and sleep it off. To the contrary, there is no evidence that working out is bad for you when you are sick, just as there is no evidence to suggest that you should rest with the common cold or flu. Or is there?

The Studies

Back in the late 90s there were two studies performed and published in the Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise Journal, and the researchers involved were actually surprised by what the results revealed: exercise appeared to be helping people feel better during the time they were sick.

The studies began as a result of a trainer at Ball State University named Thomas Weidner. What prompted him to start down this path was a pressing question: what should he tell his athletes to do when they got the common cold? Obviously the first question to ask was, “does a cold affect ones ability to physically exercise?” To answer that question, the researchers set about recruiting 24 male and 21 female volunteers between the ages of 18 and 29, all with varying degrees of fitness training and physical health. The volunteers agreed to be medically infected with a rhinovirus; responsible for roughly 30% of all common colds. In contrast was a control group of 10 young men and women within the same demographic who were not infected. The investigators then tested all of the subjects by accessing their exercise capabilities on top of their lung functions prior to their infection. All 45 test subjects were infected with the virus through their noses, resulting in the development of head colds.

After two days, when the cold symptoms were at their peak, the subjects underwent a rigorous series of exercises at both moderate and intense levels. The researchers found that having a cold had zero effect on both lung functions and the ability to exercise at peak performance levels.

According to Dr. Kaminsky, one of the lead researchers on the team, “I was surprised their lung function was not impaired. I was also surprised their overall exercise performance was not impaired, even though they were reporting feeling fatigue.”

Dr. Kaminsky and his team then performed another study. This time they randomly assigned 34 young men and women to a group that exercised while having colds, 16 others who were assigned to rest, and a volunteer group subjected to the common head cold. The exercise group ran on treadmills every other day at 70% of their maximum ability for 40 minutes. Every 12 hours the subjects, including those resting, completed questionnaires about their symptoms and physical activity. By the end of the study the researchers found there was no difference in symptoms between the group that exercised as compared with the one that did not. While there was no difference in the time that it took to recover from the colds, a greater number of those who exercised reported that working out relieved their symptoms.

The Controversy

The controversy is that many medical professionals suggest that working out while sick is actually detrimental to the recovery process because the body is stressed when it should otherwise be resting and healing itself. Some have suggested that all the studies performed by Ball State University show that working out releases endorphins in the body as a result of the extra physical activity, therefore allowing a patient to feel better due to the endorphins and not necessarily because of any improvement in cold symptoms.

However, this does not stop medical professionals from advocating physical activity while you are sick. Dr. Michael Joyner of the Mayo Clinic indicates that individuals should determine for themselves whether they feel well enough to exercise. Dr. Bill Schaffner of Vanderbilt University has suggested that exercise makes him feel better, and that he continues to work out even if he has a common cold.

A common idea over the years has been the “neck up or neck down” rule of thumb, and is generally how most physicians determine whether or not one should continue a fitness regimen while ill. If your symptoms occur from the neck up and consist of sniffles, runny nose, mild cough, or headache, then continue to work out minus any difficulty breathing during or after the activity. If symptoms occur from the neck down, including chest cold, then rest is recommended. Inflamed lungs will only be worsened by strenuous activity.

What About a Fever?

According to Marshall Smith, former scientist and researcher for NASA, in his “The Tamiflu Myth” article, the body specifically causes a fever above 101° in order to stop the telomeres at the end of a virus from replicating. Fever is the way that the body fights viral infections and cleans out toxins. By taking a pill to bring the fever down and exercising, you are actually causing more harm than good. Obviously extremely high fevers have risks of their own, but according to Marshall Smith, if you have a fever then you should simply allow your body to heal itself. The best way to achieve healing is by letting your body go through the natural stages of a cold or flu without introducing any additional stressors.

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