AMA #13: Winter Months & Sickness, Wim Hof Breathing & Stressors

If you suffer from colds and flus and you're going to spend a lot of time in a particular indoor environment, you might be wise to find a air humidifier—something that brings more moisture into the air that you're breathing, especially at night while you're sleeping.

Another key reason why there's more transmission of colds and flus in the winter months is because people are spending more time indoors. And oftentimes, the way those indoor environments are being heated is drying out the nasal passages, and the nasal passages represent a primary site of defense for viral infections, like colds and flus, but also bacterial infections and fungal infections for that matter.

The studies that have explored the relationship between physical proximity and transmission of cold and flu have actually analyzed things down to the range of, well, if you're standing 1 foot apart or you're standing 3 feet apart or 6 feet apart, what's the probability that you will contract that cold or flu? And it follows a very direct relationship where the closer the proximity, the more likely that you're going to contract the cold or flu from that person.

People who deliberately breathe through their nose tend to get fewer colds and flus. Also, people who tend to breathe through their mouth more tend to get more colds and flus.

If you feel those air passages drying out, just be aware that when you take those dried out air passages indoors and you're around other people that might have colds and flus, you are going to be more susceptible. So, that's cause for taking a hot shower, perhaps if you have access to a steam room or humidifier, and rehydrating those nasal and oral passages.

One of the reasons, not the only, but one of the reasons for the greater prevalence of cold and flus in the short days, AKA winter months of the year, is that people are spending more time indoors and therefore closer proximity.

When people wipe their eyes, even when people wipe their skin—because oftentimes, they have cold or flu virus on their skin. It doesn't always survive terribly long on the skin, but if they wipe their face or wipe their nose or are using tissues and then don't wash their hands thoroughly afterwards, they can transmit cold and flu simply through handshake.

If people are telling you that they are sneezing and coughing due to a cold or flu but that they are 'not contagious'... Keep in mind that any time someone is sneezing or coughing, they are in fact contagious.

The hairs of your nostrils, the mucus itself, and the microbiome—the trillions of little micro-bacteria that thrive in the mucosal lining of your nasal passages—actually serve to protect against many of the incoming infections.