Exercise Aids in Common Cold Prevention

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Exercise Aids in Common Cold Prevention

As people get older, their ability to fight off infection and other health problems diminishes. The immune system does not function as well in older adults as it does in younger people, even when fighting something as simple as a cold.

Aside from eating right and taking the recommended daily vitamins, seniors - particularly postmenopausal women - may now have another way to keep their immune system in shape - exercise. A recent study, supported by the National Cancer Institute, attempted to show this correlation.
Although studies on the relationship between exercise and upper-respiratory infections have been performed, they were both short-term and included a small number of participants. The group of participants for the study, which was published in the November 2006 issue of The American Journal of Medicine, included 115 overweight and obese, sedentary, postmenopausal women from the Seattle area. Women were randomly assigned to either a moderate-intensity exercise group or to a control group that did not exercise. The exercises consisted of 45-minute sessions, five days per week for 12 months. The control group attended weekly 45-minute stretching sessions.
Participants completed a self-administered questionnaire, first at baseline, and then at three-, six-, nine- and 12-month intervals, that recorded the number of times they had a cold or the flu, including when they visited a doctor. Before the women were assigned to groups, they were taught how to monitor the occurrence of upper respiratory tract infections.
Results: The number of colds in the intervention group was lower in the first three months of the study and was approximately three times lower than the stretching group at the end of the 12-month study. The authors concluded that one year of moderate-intensity exercise reduced the incidence of colds in postmenopausal women, adding: "These findings are of public health relevance and add a new facet to the growing literature on the health benefits of moderate exercise."
Chubak J, McTiernan A, Soresen B, et al. Moderate-intensity exercise reduces the incidence of colds among postmenopausal women. American Journal of Medicine 2006;119(11):937-942.