Tuesday afternoon, ABC13 Meteorologist Elyse Smith spoke to Dr. Ashley Okotie-Eboh, a family physician with Memorial Hermann Family Medicine at Greater Heights Convenient Care Center, to de-bunk this old wives tale. It turns out the cold itself can't make you sick, but there's more to the story.
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Dr. Okotie-Eboh described how, during the winter months, with the lack of sunlight and cold temperatures, we spend more time indoors. This means we're not getting as much vitamin D from the sun and are around others who could spread infections. Those are just two factors that could impact your immune system and make you more prone to getting a common cold.
"A common one is called rhinovirus," Dr. Okotie-Eboh said. "We think about it because rhinos have a very big horn on their nose. It loves the temperature inside the nose because the nose is a little bit colder than your central body temperature. And that might be a reason why we see more cold infections during the colder months. But it's hard to make a direct correlation."
And it turns out that the speed at which it cools down outside could increase your chance of getting sick.
Dr. Okotie-Eboh referenced a study where patients stepped out into a very cold, air-conditioned environment that was just five degrees lower than the surrounding environment.
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"And when they did that, they noticed that their symptoms came on a lot faster than when they were introduced gradually to that environment," Dr. Okotie-Eboh said.
So, the speed at which temperatures drop can have an impact on if you're more prone to catching a cold.
To that point, Houston recently experienced over a 40-degree temperature drop from Sunday to Monday, so it's a time like this when we might need to take a little extra care to prevent us from getting sick.
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