Exercise while experiencing sickness
Exercise while experiencing sickness
Two years ago I started running after an 8 year hiatus. The previous blog post describes my tentative steps followed by substantial improvement in running ability and endurance.
Until a couple of weeks ago, I was running 50 plus miles a week.
I just got through a two-week bad cold. Probably not the flu, but enough to take a bite out me. I took 3 days off running which coincided with having stopped work for a couple of days. I then did reduced walk/runs, which tended to be on the mild or very easy intensities. One of two weeks shows a low of 22 miles (remember, my average has been over 50 miles a week for the past few months).
A person who walks 30 minutes most days, with a cold, might reduce to 15 minutes a day or 30 minutes a day with reduced effort (i.e., slower walking pace). Adjusting our fitness habit depends on our symptoms (e.g. how severe is the cold) and our "normal" level of fitness. The same 15 minute walk could be way too much for the frail person in an institutional setting.
Okay. A week of doing absolutely nothing will not put a dent in my overall aerobic fitness, but a month would start the erosion of fitness!. A month in bed for a frail person could very well be a serious breach in survival fitness.
Of course, a tremendously virulent flu might have taken me down enough to further reduce exercise or stop altogether.
Too little activity is bad for health and too much can lead to injuries and sickness.Proper doseage of movement stimulates the maintenance and/or building of healthy tissue/various bodily sytem cells, including the immune system. We kinesiologists actually use the same J-curve graph used by pharmacologists to represent optimal doses of drugs. Exercise is becoming a 'drug of choice' to coincide with Cancer treatments--for example. Aerobic training has been used in cardiac rehab for over 40 years now!
Between you and me, maybe I gave myself an opportunity for catching the cold/flu--by running too much leading up to the cold. Avoid over exercising if you are especially concerned these days about getting sick.
