How Strenuous Exercise Affects Our Immune System

As a machinist and building maintenance engineer, I can almost guarantee any ill feeling you&#x27;re experiencing after a trip to your local gym is due to the air quality.<p>Gyms are rarely purpose built facilities. Rather, theyre rented and renovated spaces. In turn, airflow in the structure is planned for light industrial or office space. Almost no thought goes into the fact that gyms are sometimes hundreds of occupants moving the air at two to three times what the OSHA or planning documents indicate. Paints with VoC&#x27;s, sealants, and even offgassing plastics from gym mats or new equipment can turn the air quality from decent to garbage in a few hours.<p>I was once contracted to fix an air handler issue at a fitness center. The root cause was a set of 6 un-ventilated panini presses that were placed near the front desk as part of an effort to sell snacks and sandwiches. The added smoke and particulate had decreased the filter life and burned out a blower motor. The solution was either get rid of the electric grills, or start replacing 30 day filters every week.

I&#x27;ve been running for twenty years and am currently on a half-year streak with around 15km &#x2F; day. In all those years I&#x27;ve been sick for about two weeks all in all. Before working out, that was like the average over half a year.<p>Conclusion: Figure out what works for you, have a daily routine, add a bit of obsession and stop reading stories about the pros and cons of exercising.

I have one rule: I only ever do sports if I have rested well the night before. It took me until I reached my 40s to realise that lack of sleep + heavy exercise = high chance of catching a cold.<p>Other sure ways how I can get sick: overdo sauna after exercising and, by far the worst, overdoing cold showers (Jim Hoff anyone? - I got seriously sick experimenting with that)<p>I guess the overall strength of my immune system is below average :-(

I gotta stash this one away. I often refer to the disaster of 20th century health science as scientists repeatedly gathering a single point of data and then drawing a line (or hyperplane) though it, but this is a great article clearly demonstrating an example of that, and how plausible it all seemed at the time.<p>(Not that it&#x27;s a trend limited to the 20th century. But it seems to me to have been extremely bad in the health area in that time frame. Not uniquely so necessarily, but quite bad.)

My personal experience with long (100miles+) cross-country mtb riding (with lots of climbing) is that in fact, catching a cold after such a strenuous ride is way more common than the base rate. This is also the experience reported by most professional cyclists (check TdF reports).<p>My under-researched model of how this happens, is that there is a lot of tear-and-wear in the muscles where the effort is happening, which leads to inflammation, and that&#x27;s where the white-blood cells might end up.

The standout quote for me: &quot;[immune cells] moved elsewhere, migrating to the animals’ guts or lungs, portions of the body that might be expected to need extra immune help after hard exercise&quot;.<p>Rapidly producing immune cells during exercise, then letting them (and more) die off would be a baffling response. But pumping them into the lungs (because you&#x27;ve been breathing hard through your mouth) and gut (for when you make up lost energy, and maybe eat some raw meat you&#x27;ve been hunting)? That makes a great deal of sense.<p>That effect is unconfirmed in humans, but it would ground our observations in an evolutionarily-sane outcome.

This article doesnt make mention of my workout where I lift something heavy 1 time.<p>I had the idea that I wanted to reduce time in the gym, so I used the potential energy equation<p>PE= M<i>g</i>h<p>I&#x27;m not getting any taller, so the only thing I could change was either the reps or mass of weight moved.<p>I made it my goal to lift heavy weights so I&#x27;d only need to deadlift 1 time and be able to pig out.<p>TBH, it works, I lose 1 lb a week eating 3,000 calories a day. We lift 2 times a week. Warm up, then do 2+ reps of a heavy set.<p>I dont really sweat after a workout, but I look pretty big and I&#x27;m still deadlifting 450lbs. But I only deadlift that weight 1 time a week.<p>Is that &#x27;Strenuous&#x27;?

So this is very interesting to me as a swimmer. I find that at the peak of my curve (where I train harder for the regional meet) I often get sick more often, and for far longer. In swimming, this is catastrophic to your performance for the meet, so we try at all costs to prevent illness, but it always happens to one or two of us. The question I pose, does this just apply to shot term exercise, or does intense training (5 hrs a day) for about a month have the same effect.

Started doing Tabata sprints a couple years ago. Amazing how much more effective they are versus running at a slower pace for 40 minutes (my old routine).<p>Also, never knew this, they make self-powered treadmills which are really ideal for sprinting on. I just bought a ASUNA Hi-Performance Cardio Trainer Self Powered Manual Treadmill, it&#x27;s pretty much ideal for Tabata&#x2F;sprinting for a home-gym.

I have asthma, and I think strenuous exercise is good for my lung capacity long term, but makes me feel terrible the next day or 2 days after. It&#x27;s really difficult to figure out what causes my symptoms and what makes me feel better.<p>I wish there was a chip that monitored hormones and immune system factors, etc.

Anecdotally my own experience matches that of the rodents in the experiment. I&#x27;ve found that when I&#x27;m getting regular strenuous exercise (I bike up a steep hill as part of my commute) I almost <i>never</i> get sick, and can go &gt; 1 year without so much as a sore throat. Conversely, when I&#x27;m more sedentary for months at a go, I&#x27;m more likely to become ill.

i think its not the exercise but the rest that follows after a strenuous activity that makes you prone to get sick. its been my theory that if you rest like you are on your last breath, your immune system stops being active. but if you stay active and keep moving your body like you have to survive, your immune system is boosted.<p>ive tested this theory time and time and seems to be on point.<p>there have been a number of times when i was feeling sick and instead of resting, id go out in the cold freezing and walk outside for hours. next day i would be completely healed.<p>but when im just home bed ridden that sickness can linger for days or even weeks.<p>im also a huge fan of taking cold shower the moment you feel like you are carching a cold. it works way too often to be a coincidence.

&gt;athletes are lousy at identifying whether and why they are sniffling.<p>Not an expert, but wonder if this is caused by a hangover from the endorphin dump from the marathon. I felt that way afterwards.

Anecdotally: when I was a bike racer I noted that if I was so exhausted after a hard training ride (usually 5+ hours, &gt;100 miles) that I was involuntarily falling asleep afterward that I would inevitably come down with a sore throat leading to a cold within 12-24 hours. 100% of the time.<p>I&#x27;ve had maybe 2-3 colds in the decades since I quit racing.

I guess this research is wrong then?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nutritionfacts.org&#x2F;video&#x2F;preserving-immune-function-in-athletes-with-nutritional-yeast&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nutritionfacts.org&#x2F;video&#x2F;preserving-immune-function-...</a>

Anyone else noticed that endurance athletes look 10 years older ?

Kudus to NYT for stating the TL;DR right at the top, instead of exhausting the reader with meaningless paragraphs.<p>&gt; The review concludes that, contrary to widespread belief, a long, tiring workout or race can amplify immune responses, not suppress them.<p>Would be even better if that was reflected in the title, but alas, my expectations from a modern website are not so high.

This article could not be more wrong, and anyone who has been a truly serious athlete will agree with me.<p>There are perhaps a dozen times in my life when I was training with abnormally high intensity even for a very competitive endurance athlete and fell ill immediately afterward.<p>These range from 2 hr brutal races to 3-4 days of 5-7 hrs daily intense training or race efforts. I very rarely catch a cold, but it&#x27;s more often than not after an effort that stands out to me as memorably difficult.<p>Any serious cyclist will agree with me. Even competitive high school athletes know that you are most likely to get sick right before taper.<p>This is an example of misinterpretation of scientific experiment, most likely by the journalists but possibly by the scientists themselves.<p>EDIT: I don&#x27;t take issue with &quot;immune response is heightened after exercise&quot;. I&#x27;m sure it is. I take issue with this quote: &quot;But it is unlikely to have made you vulnerable to colds or other illnesses afterward, according to a myth-busting new review of the latest science about immunity and endurance exercise&quot;.