Does exercise help you fight off viruses and Bacteria diseases?

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 montyjohn 03 May 2022

I'm currently working on getting fit. And as always if I do a lot of something I wonder what unintended benefits there are. Those that drink beer and wine do this all the time.

So I was thinking, when you have a nasty virus or bacteria infection, one of the things your body does is raise the body temperature (fever). We believe this happens to make the body less hospitable for nasties that are sensitive to high temperatures.

I assume your body doesn't keep an elevated temperature all the time as a precaution because it would use a lot of energy which isn't an evolutionary benefit. I assume there are other negatives also.

The exception to the above however is when you do exercise. As you release more energy from your blood via work done by your muscles you also produce a lot of heat which our bodies try and get rid of. This is why you become a sweaty monster.

 If you do exercise on a regular basis, does this repetitive increase in body temperature weed out nasties that are lurking inside of you ready and waiting for you to feel a little run down to take over? 

In other words, does exercise help you fight off viruses and Bacteria diseases?

 elliot.baker 03 May 2022
In reply to montyjohn:

Interesting train of thought - though in a book on training I've read it says when you are training your immune system is weaker so you are more susceptible to illness because your body is working so hard to recover / build muscle etc.

Maybe any benefit of increased temperature is offset by something like your white blood cells being preoccupied fixing muscles torn through exercise? I'm sure there are lots of different factors at play though!!

 fred99 03 May 2022
In reply to elliot.baker:

> Interesting train of thought - though in a book on training I've read it says when you are training your immune system is weaker so you are more susceptible to illness because your body is working so hard to recover / build muscle etc.

This is definitely the case.

 Durbs 03 May 2022
In reply to montyjohn:

Hmmm - anecdotally, when I started doing regular HIIT or cardio stuff, I did think I'd been ill less - fewer colds, coughs etc. than I'd normally expect, especially with kids coming back form school/nursery like little snot factories, but seldom passed on to me, or if they did, never really manifested into proper colds.

 Dave Garnett 03 May 2022
In reply to montyjohn: 

> In other words, does exercise help you fight off viruses and Bacteria diseases?

It's pretty well-known that chronic over-training leads to a reduction in white cell count, including NK cells and neutrophils, as well as reductions in some immunoglobulins.

On the other hand, it seems that the right amount of exercise can have the opposite effect.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8633203/ 

In any event, if you were exercising enough to generate the sort of heat needed to increase your core temperature as much as it rises during an acute infection I think you'd be in a pretty bad way.

In reply to montyjohn:

I'm not sure that exercise-induced increase in body temperature is anywhere near that of a pyretic response. The whole point of being sweaty is to make sure that body temperature doesn't rise like that...


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