Commuting - Do we get sick less often?

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article327227.ece

By riding to work we're keeping warm, plus fit. 4 of my co-workers have had bad colds over the past few weeks and I haven't even had a sniffle.

Hopefully I don't die of bird flu next week... :rolleyes:

Funny you mentioned .... In addition to ride as much as I can, I also drive with as much wind blowing inside the vehicle as possible. Even if I have to bundle up.

I am yet to catch a cold in the last 3 years.

I've been commuting since May 3-5 times a week. I have had 2 colds and am currently getting over the second one. However, my son is 2 and brings home quite a few bugs and I catch only a few of them.
He recovers in about 2 days. Me in 3 and my wife takes 2 weeks. I may not catch many less colds but I do get over them amazingly fast.

Another item of note is that while I have lost quite a bit of weight, I still have a ways to go before I would say I am at a healthy weight.

No doubt that I end up doing a lot better when I keep riding. Whenever I take much time off the bike, I almost always end up coming down with something. Just plain weird but it happens like clockwork.

Between bike commuting and regular blood donations I'm fit as a fiddle

Well, there is a good chance that you are sweating off the junk that your body's lymph nodes are filtering off...

Meanwhile other folks while remaining "stagnant" are not moving their blood well past their bodys natural filters... also by breathing heavily you may also be dislodging just as much as might also be bringing in...

At any rate, exercise is good for your bodys defensive systems.

I started *fully* commuting again this week (my bike got totalled in mid sept. from an accident). I caught a cold about a week and a half ago, and since I started riding again yesterday (on my awesome new steed) my cold isn't as bad as it was. In fact, I think riding is helping me get over this crud (seriously... in my throat), and I feel A LOT better :) on top of riding in frosty conditions!

<3

I will not tempt fate by attributing not getting sick b/c I ride a bike. I will attribute minor knee aches to riding a bike though.

No sickness of any consequence since I started daily commuting. However, the kids start attending daycare in January so I imagine I'll be catching something...

If the bike replaces a bus or train, definitely you are saving yourself from a load of sniffling and sneezing commuters.

My rule is that if I'm too sick to ride 36 miles in the cold, I'm too sick to work. It is extremely rare for me to invoke the rule. I definitely miss less work than my colleagues and they probably need to feel worse than me before declaring themselves unwell.

I'm the sickly type. I've found that when I started commuting I've been less sick. Two times already I've missed the colds running around in the office. But maybe that's because I've allready had most cold varieties ;-).

i still can get colds. right now i'm congested, but it's my contention that i have intermittent allergies.

My rule is that if I'm too sick to ride 36 miles in the cold, I'm too sick to work. It is extremely rare for me to invoke the rule. I definitely miss less work than my colleagues and they probably need to feel worse than me before declaring themselves unwell.


I use the same rule, if I'm to sick to get on the bike and ride somewhere I'm to sick to do anything

my startout experience was the opposite. prior to the bike commuting thing, i went in weekly expectation of coming down with something, either from my kid or from constantly-changing workplaces. nothing whatever for over six years. then i started doing this commute, and within two weeks i got the cold that ate manhattan and kept me out for most of two more weeks. but i'm not surprised in retrospect. i went from nothing to 6-12 miles a day between one week and the next, and in the middle of that i took a bus home one day . . .

my theory is that my immune system took a beating while it was first trying to adjust to the change, and just breathed in a whole bunch of strange organisms right when it was least equipped to deal with them. nothing since then. so far. touch wood.

I haven't had a head cold or a bout of the flu in a couple years... since I got laid off and stopped working in an office with a buncha people who have rugrats and rugrat-transmitted bugs.

I believe it has more to do with my isolation from people (I'm a hermit) than it does with exercise and / or bicycling.

I think for colds, my commute or exercise somehow "burns it through my system" faster. I know it's not a valid medical term, but I know I don't seem to suffer as long as other people.

There are extremes though. One woman in my building has missed weeks due to being run over by a van. That would skew statistics.

On the other hand, my boss is a typical type A stressed out workaholic of 53 with a waistline getting dangerously close to his hight.
He came in Monday morning, said hi to his boss and collapsed. He will survive this and hopefully it is his wakeup call.

I generally cough up and spit out a bunch of junk from my throat while I'm riding, I think this makes me a bit more healthy day to day. But I'm sure the people who see me spitting on the street would think otherwise.

I have also noticed this trend with myself and other officer workers, they get sick and I don't. When I do use my car, I don't have heat in it so, I am still in the cold. I don't know if there is any science behind all of this but I definitely think that being in the elements more often contributes to better temp. acclimation as well as immune system strength.

I've noticed how resilient I am against sickness, too. I think it is the bicycling.

I think our immune systems are probably stronger, maybe in part because of better blood circulation and volume.

I think bicycling is making me healthier, but quitting smoking sure didn't hurt either. I notice my coworkers getting colds and having them for weeks, but they say I should be sick. Why? I am exercising and making an effort to stay well. Washing my hands often helps as well.

3 yrs. 1 cold, that's it!

1000 mg per day of Vitamin C
200 UI per day Vitamin E

37 miles per day 5 days a week on the bike.



Commuter31

i must say i would agree that a biker becomes less vernurable to sickness. Ive had my sicknesses pass through my household, yet i never seemed to catch it. never taken a sick day from either school or work, where as my sister, a lazy couch potato, has taken at least 4 seperate sick days just since the start of the school year, only in september.

I had a coworker call me stupid for biking to work in 22F temps (it had just started snowing heavily). He then asked me "don't you have a cold?". My reply was that started 3 days ago and was over yesterday. Much better than my average coworker's cold length of 1 to 2 weeks.

No doubt that I end up doing a lot better when I keep riding. Whenever I take much time off the bike, I almost always end up coming down with something. Just plain weird but it happens like clockwork.

This is me. Couple weeks ago the wife and kids caught a cold. Ran right down the line one at a time. I was commuting to work daily and didn't catch it. Finished that job project, didn't need to commute to work, five days later I started coming down with the bug the wife and kids had. :mad:

Should have kept riding.