New York, October 26, 2006 – A moderate exercise program may reduce the
incidence of colds. A study published in the November issue of The American
Journal of Medicine, led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research
Center, found that otherwise sedentary women who engaged in moderate exercise
had fewer colds over a one year period than a control group.
Subjects in a group of 115 overweight and obese, sedentary, postmenopausal
women were randomly assigned to either a moderate exercise program (45 minutes
per day, five days per week and comprised of mostly brisk walking) or to a
once-weekly 45 minute stretching session. Both the exercisers and the
stretchers filled out questionnaires every 3 months on the number of episodes
of allergies, upper respiratory tract infections (colds and flu) and other
infections. Subjects were taught how to distinguish various forms of
infections and were followed for one year.
Over 12 months, the risk of colds decreased modestly in exercisers and
increased modestly in stretchers. In the final three months of the study, the
risk of colds in stretchers was more than 3-fold higher than that of
exercisers. More stretchers than exercisers had at least one cold during the
12-month study period (48.4% vs 30.2%), and among women reporting at least one
cold, stretchers tended to report colds more frequently than exercisers.
Senior author Cornelia M. Ulrich, PhD, of the Hutchinson Center, writes, “Our
trial is the first to report on the effects of a year-long, moderate-intensity
exercise training program on the incidence of upper respiratory tract
infections. Although we did not find an effect overall on upper respiratory
tract infections, our study suggests that moderate-intensity training can
reduce the risk of colds in postmenopausal, nonsmoking, overweight or obese
women. This finding is of clinical relevance and adds a new facet to the
growing literature on the health benefits of moderate exercise.”
The study is “Moderate-Intensity Exercise Reduces the Incidence of Colds Among
Postmenopausal Women” by Jessica Chubak MBHL, Anne McTiernan MD PhD, Bess
Sorensen MS, Mark H. Wener MD, Yutaka Yasui PhD, Mariebeth Velasquez BS, Brent
Wood MD PhD, Kumar B. Rajan MS, Catherine M. Wetmore MPH, John D. Potter MD
PhD, and Cornelia M, Ulrich PhD, and comes from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer
Research Center, Cancer Prevention Program, Seattle, Wash; University of
Washington, Departments of Epidemiology, Medicine, and Laboratory Medicine,
Seattle, Wash; University of Alberta, Department of Public Health Sciences,
Edmonton, Alberta; University of New Mexico, Department of Psychiatry,
Albuquerque, NM; University of Washington, Department of Biostatistics,
Seattle, Wash. It appears in The American Journal of Medicine, Volume 119,
Issue 11 (November 2006), published by Elsevier.
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