My Favourite Person, Lulu

All the reasons why Lulu is my favorite person.

I’m just kidding. I’m sorry to disappoint but this blog is in fact NOT about Lulu. She typed this on my computer.

Honestly I’m having trouble thinking of a topic for this week’s blog. The only things that come to mind are ideas that I’ve already mentioned or done in previous blogs. But in light of the weather being so frigid this week, I thought I would respond to one of the theories I heard this week: Being cold cannot give you a cold. (Lulu also typed this and I decided to continue it and talk about it, so I guess she is currently my favourite person. Everyone please say a quick thank you to Lulu because without this I really have no idea what my blog would have been about.)

This morning (it’s currently Thursday because I procrastinated on this blog), my dad asked me if the weather was really warm enough to be leaving my jacket in the house and not wearing it to school. This is a question he seems to ask me a lot, and it’s always because he doesn’t want me to get sick (also because he’s worried I would be cold). So obviously, my position on this theory- a position that I’m almost 100% sure my dad agrees with- is that it’s false. I told Lulu that I’d do a little bit of research but honestly I’m feeling a little bit lazy. She did tell me that she would be reading AND commenting on this blog so I didn’t want to disappoint, but I don’t think I’m going to go too in-depth about it. 

The first thing that popped up as I searched “can being cold give you a cold” was an article from Northwestern Medicine (so everything it says is legit, I guess). They quoted Dr. Rajendram, who said “Wearing layers during the winter can help prevent physiological conditions that can make you more susceptible to contracting viruses.” So technically he’s saying that staying warm and not being cold helps you avoid getting a cold. Another article I saw as I took a little scrolldown Google was from healthline.com (I use this website often so I’m hoping this is also legit), which said “New research has found that cold temperatures lower immunity in the nose and make us more susceptible to viruses.” I’m not going to go into a whole analysis on these quotes but it definitely is pretty decent proof that there exists a correlation between being cold and getting a cold. Therefore, I feel like after reading all of this that it’s pretty clear that the theory is false. I did find, however, a few articles that agreed with the theory but they seemed like sketchy websites (maybe I’m biased) and for the sake of proving my argument, I choose to be ignorant. It was also just more work to click into those and read more and then actually talk about it on here but I’m sure I’ll go back and read those after this blog post is done and posted onto the wordpress website.

My own experience, which is obviously the most credible thing on this blog, also tells me that this theory is false. I would like to start by prefacing that my immune system is as strong as a horse. Perhaps it is because of all the Red Bull I drink. Anyways, I haven’t been sick enough recently to be able to prove my rejection of the theory. However, I will speak to the previous years of my poor health. I usually get some type of sickness from where the lines blur between fall and winter, and my assumption is that it’s because I’m enduring a change in temperature. Along the same wavelength is the idea of always drying your hair after washing it, especially during the winter time. My dad always warns me that I’ll get violently sick (maybe I’m being dramatic) if I leave my hair wet because the cold will “seep into my scalp and chip away at my immune system.” Honestly I don’t think he’s wrong, because every time I leave my hair wet and let it dry during the winter, I notice that I wake up the next morning with a fuzzy throat and a stuffy nose. This all goes back to prove that being cold DOES in fact make you get a cold, and while I realize that my explanations were lowkey not so good, I hope I was able to make my case. Either way, please let me know if you also disagree with the theory or if you think I’m a scam that just wrote a whole blog full of misinformation.

Websites I used while researching (just in case I get docked for plagiarism because I quoted)

https://www.nm.org/healthbeat/healthy-tips/can-winter-make-you-sick#:~:text=Being%20Cold%20Can%20Cause%20a%20Cold&text=Dr.,Rajendram.

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/scientists-finally-figure-out-why-youre-more-likely-to-get-sick-in-cold-weather#:~:text=New%20research%20has%20found%20that,colds%20and%20flu%20during%20winter.