Does Having Wet Hair Make You More Likely To Catch A Cold?

[anthro-nerd]

Current debate in the office... please help me out!

My answer is NO!

[Old_Geezer]

Apparently not. But I do wonder if being cold affects the immune system any.

[Sqad]

spath.

"So sqad as a sinus expert how does recycled, dry, cooled air affect the ears, nose and throat? Would it not irritate them?"

I thought that i had answered that in my post above, however, to clarify..........in the normal person, the lining of the nose is very good, very good indeed at controlling the moisture content and the temperature of inhaled air. It does this by turning up or turning down the blood flow through the hundreds of miles of blood vessels in the nose (turbinates)
Now this is for the "normal" individual, people who are sensitive for reasons given above (Vasomotor rhinitis) struggle to control this mechanism and may suffer the effects similar to a cold.

[andres]

There was an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease a few years ago . I think that was blamed on dirty or faulty air conditioning systems.

[mccfluff]

spath i can't talk for other systems but the one in our office has a a separate fresh air system, fresh air is brought in and old air taken out so there is a continuous cycle of air being circulated and heated/cooled by the conditioning units - of which the filters are replaced/cleaned on a regular service cycle. I doubt this is unusual and probably what most offices have in place.

[woofgang]

as ears don't "breathe" I doubt that much of the cold draught would get very far into the ear.

[douglas9401]

Must stop....reading this stuff...losing..will....to...live.

[Sqad]

O_G
" But I do wonder if being cold affects the immune system any."

Although "immune system" slips off the tongue easily in general conversation and particularly on AB, I am not entirely sure what it means. However , let us assume that it describes the production of lymphocyte and antibodies in the body, then there is no conclusive evidence that cold or low temperatures affects the activity of the "human immune system."

[Sqad]

LOL....the effect of cold on the ears, is a different matter entirely.
Cold water, as experienced by sub aqua divers, predisposes to a benign tumour in the external canal of the ear....called an osteoma.

[Old_Geezer]

Cheers.
Yes, anything the body does to ward off illness I'd reckon qualifies :-)

[anneasquith]

Father's to daughter's all over the world. You can't go out with wet hair, ""you'll catch your death of cold !!!""

[NoMercy]

A common cold is a virus. You need to be exposed to a virus in order to catch a virus.

Wet hair has no role to play in someone catching a cold which is, invariably, passed on through airborne transmission.

[Peter Pedant]

er well
drawing a few fredz together

No one has talked about the AC and the idea of forced convection - newton's law of cooling and all that ( 5/4 ths law) - lowers core temperature in the person being blown at

and if you are cold - are you more susceptible to infections? well the KGB - Yulias frenz - think so - as they chuck buckets of cold water over prisoners

n wet - hair - cold hair

am I the only one to soak dogs fur in water in hot weather? like now ? [ to cool them, dat is]

Andres is correct - AC WAS implicated in an outbreak of Legionnaires - and in sick building syndrome. Preston springs to mind, the outbreak there.

//I was on a flight back from Thailand when Sars broke out. They disinfected the plane. It was awful. Recirculated air killing my eyes and nose.//

Yeah airport authorities may not be experts on the disease they are trying to prevent ( see Ebola and poor Dr Ryan who was intentionally framed by a colleague ) - aircraft air con ISN'T really a player in spreading disease. Altho there is a mad lady ( NOT Umm!) who goes around saying it does. - - - So they looked at the spread of TB in an aircraft ( after a same day death of an open TB case who had just flown in) - NEJM - and found .... two cases in front, one beside, and two behind the index case - and none other. They concluded it was direct spread by spit , and cough and the air con had no part to play

Have fun boys and girls - lots and lots of opportunities to instantly quip
who newton den? what five forths mean den? what legionnaire dat den? KGB have I spent dat correctly den?
and so on and so on as the one line quips side splittingly pour out.....

[Sqad]

Wot dat dem cr.p PP.
legionairs wid dem wet hair..........soz, not me unferstand wid di qiestion.

[rowanwitch]

The only time I could see wet hair being a problem is when you are fighting an infection and your body is trying to heat up as part of a normal response, so no you won't catch a cold but you may
briefly impair your bodies efforts to fight one.