“Put on a jacket or you’ll catch a cold.”
Countless energetic children are told this every day as they zoom outside for playtime. But as kids grow up, this bit of advice is usually dismissed as an age-old, superstitious epithet. A virus, not the temperature, is what makes us sick, right? Well yes. But it turns out mom’s advice contains a kernel of truth too.
Yale researchers studying the rhinovirus — the common cold virus — have found a link between temperature and our body’s ability to fight a cold. The colder we get, the easier it is for the rhinovirus to trounce us into sniffling, sneezing defeat.
When human rhinoviruses were first cultured way back in the 1960s, researchers noted that the virus replicated more efficiently in temperatures just below core body temperature. Specifically, the virus thrives when temperatures are 91 to 95 degrees Fahrenheit, but slows its replication ...
