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How Strenuous Exercise Affects Our Immune System

nytimes.com

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Re: How Strenuous Exercise Affects Our Immune System

#51

Post by WhompingWindows »

sternocleidom wrote: post #46
jxcl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all anecdotal evidence that's pretty well countered by this statement: > Their first conclusion was that athletes are lousy at identifying whether and why they are sniffling. The original 1980s studies had relied on runners’ self-reports of illness. But newer experiments that actually tested saliva showed that less than a third of marathon runners who thought they had caught a cold actually had. Statistically…

The anecdotes of hundreds of national and world class athletes I have trained, raced, and interacted with over the years is worth more than any study you can paste here, my friend. I suppose you are unlikely to see anyone here back me up since HackerNews isn't exactly an athletic demographic. Fever, red eyes, overflowing mucus, extreme soreness and raw throat for days or over a week - are you trying to tell me that t…

The problem with anecdotes is there is no transparency or verifiability to that data, it's all in your inherently biased memory and mind. Real data is not perfect, but at least I can plug it into my R and see if we get the same results after analysis. If you feel passionately about it, perhaps you can create a survey instrument to gather the data about your trainees, I'd be happy to analyze that data.

Re: How Strenuous Exercise Affects Our Immune System

#52

Post by bluGill »

danmg wrote: post #29
gthtjtkt wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy, guaranteed. People always overstate their level of fitness by several orders of magnitude on anonymous internet forums.

A 450lb deadlift is not crazy.

One order of magnitude is a mere 45 lbs deadlift. Thus the poster must be horrifically weak. He must have wrote that from the nursing home, I'm sure the nurses love it that he spends his days quietly posting nonsense on the internet instead of bothering them.

Re: How Strenuous Exercise Affects Our Immune System

#53

Post by WhompingWindows »

mkirklions wrote: post #5

This article doesnt make mention of my workout where I lift something heavy 1 time. I had the idea that I wanted to reduce time in the gym, so I used the potential energy equation PE= M g h I'm not getting any taller, so the only thing I could change was either the reps or mass of weight moved. I made it my goal to lift heavy weights so I'd only need to deadlift 1 time and be able to pig out. TBH, it works, I lose 1…

How long does it take you to get to the gym? Surely doing a couple more reps after getting to gym, warm-up, and mobility isn't going to hurt your time spent.

Re: How Strenuous Exercise Affects Our Immune System

#54

Post by marban »

I've been running for twenty years and am currently on a half-year streak with around 15km / day. In all those years I've been sick for about two weeks all in all. Before working out, that was like the average over half a year.

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.

Re: How Strenuous Exercise Affects Our Immune System

#55

Post by toasterlovin »

gabept wrote: post #15
mkirklions wrote: post #5

This article doesnt make mention of my workout where I lift something heavy 1 time. I had the idea that I wanted to reduce time in the gym, so I used the potential energy equation PE= M g h I'm not getting any taller, so the only thing I could change was either the reps or mass of weight moved. I made it my goal to lift heavy weights so I'd only need to deadlift 1 time and be able to pig out. TBH, it works, I lose 1…

For a normal person, unless you're extremely tall or in a very considerable amount of PEDs, you will have a high body fat doing this.

Young men can get away with all sorts of stuff.

Re: How Strenuous Exercise Affects Our Immune System

#56

Post by crististm »

amorphous wrote: post #26

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. 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) I guess the overall strength of my immune system…

There is a high correlation between insufficient sleep and catching cold. It kind of made sense but I've looked it up and found several studies supporting this.

This winter I've tried only cold showers after running outside. Cold showers as in (sometimes) my neck hurt if I did it too long. Did not catch a cold until this spring and I think this is more correlated to insufficient rest/sleep (on top of exercising) than to water temperature.

My takeaway is enough rest is not optional and cold showers are doable even in very cold water. I have no idea how hard would be a bath in water + ice.

Re: How Strenuous Exercise Affects Our Immune System

#57

Post by sternocleidom »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #48
sternocleidom wrote: post #32

This article could not be more wrong, and anyone who has been a truly serious athlete will agree with me. 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. 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's mor…

You only present anecdata here, and you numerous times refer to "any serious athlete" or "any serious cyclist". But where is your scientific evidence supporting your claims? The article claims these claims are myths and you haven't contradicted that here.

I have a PhD from a top institution, so I'm all for science. But the science on this matter is misleading to people who aren't experts in the field, so I don't blame you for calling me out.

Let me try to explain why there is no contradiction, and why the science here can't be relied upon across the board.

First, my anecdata pertain to athletes who are competitive on a national or regional level - Olympic Trials qualifiers, Cat 1 and pro cyclists, and similar. Science will confirm that these individuals have profoundly altered physiologies as compared to average "fit" people.

A problem with extending exercise physiology research to elite athletes is that most of the time, the scientists do not have elite test subjects available. There is a world of difference between the 4 hr marathoners they probably surveyed, or even 3hr Boston qualifiers, compared to the 2:20 and under marathoner I have in mind. There simply isn't much science published on these guys, because there aren't that many of them.

Many exercise physiology papers will say "well-trained subjects between the ages of 21 and 30", and the layman will think this means they studied top athletes. But then you look at the data and see that the average 5K run time for these people is something like 18 minutes, which is much slower than even the easy 20 mile pace for the subjects of my anecdata.

So maybe, the average marathon jogger is not more likely to fall ill after an effort. But talk to anyone who has run under 2:30 for men or under 3:00 for women and they will agree with what I have found

Re: How Strenuous Exercise Affects Our Immune System

#58

Post by WillPostForFood »

crististm wrote: post #56
amorphous wrote: post #26

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. 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) I guess the overall strength of my immune system…

There is a high correlation between insufficient sleep and catching cold. It kind of made sense but I've looked it up and found several studies supporting this. This winter I've tried only cold showers after running outside. Cold showers as in (sometimes) my neck hurt if I did it too long. Did not catch a cold until this spring and I think this is more correlated to insufficient rest/sleep (on top of exercising) than…

What’s the theory behind the cold shower?

Re: How Strenuous Exercise Affects Our Immune System

#59

Post by wjnc »

awakeasleep wrote: post #49
nimbius wrote: post #40

As a machinist and building maintenance engineer, I can almost guarantee any ill feeling you're experiencing after a trip to your local gym is due to the air quality. 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 m…

You’re not even mentioning CO2 concentration. I work in a large, open office with seemingly sufficient airflow, but after buying a CO2 detector on a whim I’ve seen that it frequently reaches 1200ppm, and you actually can tell that you feel like crap when that happens. I can’t imagine if the whole office was filled with people exercising.

Our office has those installed as a regular feature in all meeting rooms. Main takeaway lesson: never fit more people in a room than was designed for. Air quality is a balance of inflow (equals outflow) and usage. Fit 9 in a room for 6? PPM way above 1000.

Re: How Strenuous Exercise Affects Our Immune System

#60

Post by dominotw »

nimbius wrote: post #40

As a machinist and building maintenance engineer, I can almost guarantee any ill feeling you're experiencing after a trip to your local gym is due to the air quality. 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 m…

Not sure what I can do with this information. I live in a crowded city and this is the only place I can get a workout.
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