Should you tone down your training when you have a cold?
Training with a cold
Aside from the fact that there’s no good place to keep a tissue in your bike shorts, there’s good reason to lay off your workout for a few days when you’re sick. “There’s just too much data right now that suggest you can get worse during hard exertion,” says David C. Nieman,D.P.H., professor of health and exercise science, Appalachian State University, Boone, North Carolina, who just reviewed eight major studies on what exercise does for or against colds and flu. Exercise can be good for you-moderate levels increase the number of germ-fighting blood cells in the body. That’s like increasing the circulation of police in a city. But heavy workouts also trigger stress hormones. And that’s like giving sleeping pills to those police: Even if they ran into a criminal, they wouldn’t be able to do their jobs, explains Dr. Nieman.
Laying off is especially important when you have more than a cold – when viruses leave you with fatigue and muscle aches and pains. In rare cases, those viruses can find their way into the heart and cause a dangerous inflammation (and damage) of the muscle.
“Keep the intensity of exercise low to nothing at all until your symptoms go away,” he says. “Then give yourself up to two weeks to ease back into your normal routine.” That holds for both the aerobic and resistance-training parts of your workout.
Current thinking for basic colds is that you can return to working out a few days after your symptoms are gone, although you should take it a little easy so your health doesn’t backslide. Ironically, one of the best ways to stay healthy and avoid having to lay off may be regular, moderate exercise.