[at-l] Mom was right! Bundle up!

[pmags at yahoo.com (Paul Magnanti)]

A news item that may be of interest to hikers:

New research says chilly feet can bring on a cold

CTV.ca News Staff

If your mother always warned you to wrap up warm to
avoid catching a cold, it appears she may have been
right all along.

British scientists say they have proof that a drop in
body temperature can kickstart viruses which lie
dormant in people during the cold season, from October
to March.

And getting your feet wet, they found, can triple the
risk of developing cold symptoms such as sore throat,
sneezing and coughing.

Staff at the Common Cold Centre in Cardiff, Wales,
asked 90 hardy volunteers to keep their bare feet in
icy water for 20 minutes.

A third of them developed colds during the following
five days, compared to just 9 per cent of another test
group who did not get their feet wet.

So while parents can now be confident in their advice
to children to wrap up well in winter, the findings do
contradict accepted scientific wisdom which dismisses
a link between chilling and viral infection.

Professor Ron Eccles, of Cardiff University's Common
Cold Centre, led the research and said the findings
supported centuries of common sense thinking.

"Mothers can now be confident in their advice to
children to wrap up well in winter," he told the Daily
Mail.

"We have reports going back hundreds of years where
people knew if they got soaking wet they were more
likely to develop a cold, so it passed into folklore
for good reason.

"It's only today, when it's less likely that people
will get drenched and they can warm up more quickly
because of central heating, that the connection has
been cast into doubt."

The research findings published in the medical journal
Family Practice say the fact that common colds are
more prevalent in the winter could be related to an
increased incidence of chilling causing more clinical
colds.

But another explanation could be our noses are colder
in winter.

"A cold nose may be one of the major factors that
causes common colds to be seasonal," Prof Eccles
explained.

"When the cold weather comes, we wrap ourselves up in
winter coats to keep warm, but our nose is directly
exposed to the cold air.

"Cooling of the nose slows down clearance of viruses
from the nose and slows down the white cells that
fight infection."

Anyone becoming chilled and worrying about developing
a cold could help themselves by warming up as quickly
as possible, Prof Eccles added.

But the best protection against the miserable common
cold could be simply to dress warmly in winter and
keep feet dry. 

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The true harvest of my life is intangible.... a little stardust 
caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched
--Thoreau
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