Was grandma right? Can you really get sick from being cold?

‘Make sure you bundle up or you’ll catch a cold’ is a statement many people have heard from parents or grandparents growing up.

The idea that being cold translates into catching a cold has persisted through generations, despite doctors’ assurance that catching a cold actually involves contracting germs from another contagious person.

Though the youngest generations now scoff at the thought of becoming sick just because they walked outside on a winter day, the latest research suggests there just might be something to that warning grandma used to give us.

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According to research from Yale University, there are a couple reasons why being cold does impact your ability to catch a cold. First and foremost, experts have known for some time that viruses like those linked to the common cold replicate more readily in cooler environments. This means if you are breathing in cold air, the germs that get caught up in your nostrils are more likely to replicate in large numbers than if you were breathing in a warmer climate.

The germs in your nose, however, have little power over your body if your immune system is strong, so researchers at Yale set out to see if a drop in core temperature had an impact on the immune system. Using laboratory rats, a team of experts tested airway cells at various induced temperatures and then monitored those cells’ immune responses to the common rhinovirus.

What the researchers found was cells incubated at lower temperatures were less likely to fight off the cold virus compared to cells incubated at normal body temperatures.

“We found that the innate immune response to the rhinovirus is impaired at the lower body temperature compared to the core body temperature,” said co-author Akiko Iwasaki, Ph.D, a professor of immunobiology and molecular biology, in a university press release.

“At the core body temperature, the rhinovirus is detected by the host immune system better, and the factors that block virus replication, type I interferons, work better at the higher temperature,”  she explained to Yahoo Health. “This study would support the idea that the cold weather is a risk factor, by reducing the immune response to the cold virus. It would not hurt to bundle up in cold weather.”

SEE ALSO: Could the common cold increase a child’s risk for stroke?

For extra protection, experts recommended people cover up the nose and mouth when in cold environments. Doing this keeps the temperature inside the airways higher, thus preventing virus replication.

The team did caution the study results were only seen in laboratory rodents, and that no human studies on the subject have yet been conducted. Assuming the mechanisms are the same, however, experts believe it is always good sense to maintain warmth when it is cold outside.

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