By Jordan Roberts, Staff Reporter.
During the flu and cold season does a person get sick by picking up infection from the cold weather or is the infection picked up from spending time indoors?
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that “5 percent to 20 percent of the population gets the flu and more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from seasonal flu-related complications.”
The CDC explains that the leading way influenza and sinus infections spread is “from person to person in respiratory droplets of coughs and sneezes.”
According to Rashelle Hoffman, a registered nurse for interventional radiology at McLaren Bay Region, the cold weather is not the source of infection. “When it’s cold people are inside more, so they’re in closer proximity; so there’s a lot more viruses that get spread around a lot more easily.”
Hoffman believes the lack of vitamin D a person receives during the cold seasons could attribute to the immune system’s inability to fight off infections, rather than the cold weather itself.
Maranie Holt, another registered nurse for interventional radiology at McLaren, extrapolates on Hoffman’s perspective by stating that the cold weather has an inverse effect on the immune system. Rather than suppressing it, the immune response becomes triggered.
“It’s just the opposite. Going outside without a jacket in the cold appears to activate it.” She claims this folk wisdom could be attributed to parents making sure their children wear their jackets during the cooler seasons.
Hoffman claims that bacteria thrive in temperatures that are not too hot or cold. “Say surgery for example, they keep it cold so that there is not much replication of bugs… and the spread of bacteria. It seems that the temperature in your nose, around 98 degrees, is optimal for it to spread.”
Both Holt and Hoffman believe that the dry air from central heating can foster the risk of infection.
“It compromises your mucus membranes… so you are supposed to keep your humidity at a certain temperature or you do get sick,” states Holt.
With the cold and flu seasons just upon us, it is important to be prepared to combat infections outdoors as well as in our homes so that we can keep ourselves, our colleagues, friends and family healthy.
