AARP Hearing Center
Before you attempt to answer the question virtually every exerciser asks during cold and flu season — should you work out when you’re sick? — make like a real estate mogul and consider three things: location, location, location.
It’s everything when it comes to buying property, and the same is true when deciding whether it’s safe to exercise when you’re sick. Where are your symptoms located: below the neck or above the neck?
“If your symptoms are below the neck — chest congestion or body aches, for example — it’s usually better to rest and wait it out,” says Mike Ren, M.D., assistant professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. “If your symptoms are above the neck — runny nose, sore throat — you can consider low- to moderate-intensity exercise, especially if you’ve already built it into your daily routine and you feel lacking without doing some form of exercise.”
Indeed, research shows that exercise doesn’t prolong or intensify an upper respiratory tract infection in moderately fit and active people. One large review of studies, published in 2020 in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, suggests that exercise is more than simply OK when you have such an infection; it may reduce the severity of symptoms, as well as the number of sick days.
Not all forms of exercise get the green light. “This is not the time to weight lift or try to run a marathon,” says William Schaffner, M.D., professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and past medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. “But gentle exercise is a good thing as you recover."
This more mellow style of working out — dubbed “cozy cardio” by some — might involve stretching, walking around the block, perhaps lifting some dumbbells. “But remember you’re working to get back to normal. This is not a time to stress yourself,” Schaffner adds.
Less is more
Apart from the standard exercise recommendations — lifting weights a few times a week, logging up to 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity activity such as brisk walking — physical activity in and of itself plays a specific role in recovering from whatever it is that’s ailing you.
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