Stretching or Exercising... Preventing the Common Cold

Sometimes people tell me they have been stretching, that is their exercise for the week.  Now it is true that most exercise specialists make stretching an important part of each session, but stretching is not really the same as actual exercise.  Stretching helps avoid injury and can be an important part of relieving pain.  However stretching doesn’t raise the heart rate and blood pressure.  So it isn’t strenuous enough to be called exercise.  Once I read an interesting article about the benefits of exercise to prevent the common cold.  They compared people that agreed to only exercise vs. people that agreed to modest exercise like walking, sit ups or push ups.    The real exercise group had fewer colds. 

http://www.amjmed.com/webfiles/images/journals/ajm/prrelOct2306.pdf

People that start an exercise program should start gradually to prevent injury.  Start with a short walk.  Commit to doing it every day.  This is a better strategy than a rare very long walk that exhausts you for days.  People that don’t exercise in the winter really struggle the next spring.  Most get weaker and weaker each spring. Exercising all through the winter is a good idea. Pick warm clothes or a warm place to walk to make it to spring.

Every patient that I have taken care of that is 90 years old or older, alert, on no medications and living alone exercises daily.  Usually they walk.  My own elderly grandfather regularly walked 5 miles or more a day and swam regularly well into old age. He was a rascal, but a rascal on his own terms. There are worse things.