How to Catch a Cold

We’ve all been told over the years, “Come in out of the snow! You’re going to catch a cold!” Well, if a cold was a metaphor for frozen fingers or a red nose, Mom would’ve been right. However, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has found that being chilled, overheated, frozen, or thawed has little or no effect on the development of a cold.

So what is the true method of catching a cold? Cold viruses, like any other virus, do not magically appear. Viruses are microscopic parasites that are basically DNA or RNA surrounded by a protein shell. They can’t reproduce without a host cell. In the case of the common cold, essentially every time you catch a cold, it has been given to you by another host. Most viruses do not survive outside of the body for long, only up to 6 hours or so. So how is it getting to you?

image from commoncold.org

When someone else has a cold, their body starts trying to expel it. This means that they will sneeze, cough, have a runny nose, and other symptoms that are essentially the body’s way of removing unwanted substances. When someone near you has a cold and they sneeze, they send tiny particles of moisture, many of which may contain the cold virus, into the air, waiting for you to breathe them in and become infected. It is also just as easy to catch a cold with no people around, depending on where you are. Busy, high-traffic areas like offices, schools, and mass transit stations tend to be rife with germs due to the constant contact of human hands. When a sick person touches their nose or mouth, germs are transferred to their hands. When they touch a surface, the germs then transfer to that, and as mentioned above, they can survive for up to 6 hours. As soon as a healthy person touches the surface, the germs are on their hands and it’s just a matter of rubbing an eye or touching a mouth, and a cold is caught.

It’s important to understand how to catch a cold in order to know what to avoid. By staying away from busy, crowded places when possible, you increase your chances of avoiding a cold. Also, washing hands often or using some kind of hand sanitizer will help greatly. If your hands are clean before touching any susceptible areas, like the mouth, eyes, or nose, the common cold will have much less chance of reaching you.