News
For
SWIM PARENTS
Published by The American
Swimming Coaches Association
5101 NW 21 Ave., Suite 200
Fort Lauderdale FL 33309
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Workouts and the Common Cold
When swimmers show signs of a
common cold should they continue to practice?
Sometimes over ambitious swimmers, coaches,
and parents choose to treat a cold as a simple inconvenience and push on toward
that all important qualifier meet in February.
Using common sense with the common cold is
the best policy. Some "colds" may be far more serious
infections waiting to become more intense as stress increases and resistance
weakens.
Anthony Verde, PhD, exercise physiologist at
the Sports Medicine Center in Wayne, Pennsylvania, stated in the June 1990
issue of The Physician and Sportsmedicine, "You have a good chance
of turning a cold into something more severe by exercising with any intensity
during the incubation stage."
However, in the same article, Harvey Simon,
MD, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School provides the
following advice to physicians, "Try to reassure your patients that colds
and exercise do not interact in major ways. If anything, anecdotal
evidence says that some athletes feel better exercising with colds. This
would make sense because exercise can increase mucus flow, which might provide
relief for upper respiratory tract symptoms."
Edward Eichner, MD, professor of medicine at
the University of Oklahoma and an editorial board member of The Physician and
Sportsmedicine has found that physicians who regularly treat athletes with
colds use the following guidelines: (Also from the June 1990 issue of The
Physician and Sportsmedicine.)
"If the symptoms
are located above the neck (runny nose, sneezing, scratchy throat), then
exercise is safe...[however] athletes should not exercise with below‑the‑neck
symptoms such as fever, muscle aches, loss of appetite, and hacking cough with
sputum production."
Some parents wonder if it is permissible for
swimmers to participate in dryland activities and avoid the water during
colds. In fact, breathing the super humid air at the water surface may
help relieve cold symptoms. So long as athletes do not have a fever,
history of serious virus infections of which the cold may just be the beginning
of, or feel weak and lethargic, a light to moderate swimming workout may be
beneficial. The Swim Parents Newsletter editorial staff recommends the
conservative policy of always checking with your family physician and
encourages swimmers, coaches, and parents to remember that an upcoming
qualifying meet is not as important as a child's opportunity to recover from a
cold.