Getting a cold after diving

[cindysoo]

Hello,
I've only had 2 confined water dives here (I'm taking my Open water certification) and each time I got a cold. Can anyone help me explain why that may be happening to me and what I can do to prevent it?

Thank you!
Cindy

 

[jumbo]

a few tips ive picked up

if you can, a dry suit is the way to go. If your in your open water class maybe the shop your with will be willing to work with you by intergrating dry suit training with your open water class

im guessing your diving with a wet suit, proper fit is key. If its too tight youll lose blood flow, if its too big water will constantly flush through your suit and youll never warm up.

some divers keep warm water in a cooler or thermos and dump it into their suit before the dive, some claim this is counterproductive in the end, but it sure feels good.

try a thicker hood or maybe one that fits better.

and also try to whatever you can between dives too stay warm, dry towls and warm fluids help but also try eating alot of calories, personally i think that is one of the most over looked tips out there

good luck

jumbo

 

[1_T_Submariner]

You got cold or a cold (like sick)? If cold I agree with the above. If you got a cold (like sick) you need to stay away from people. Temperature has nothing to do with getting a cold.

 

[jumbo]

Hello,
I've only had 2 confined water dives here (I'm taking my Open water certification) and each time I got a cold. Can anyone help me explain why that may be happening to me and what I can do to prevent it?

Thank you!
Cindy

got a cold, maybe i should pay better attention!

 

[jimdiverman]

Hello,
I've only had 2 confined water dives here (I'm taking my Open water certification) and each time I got a cold. Can anyone help me explain why that may be happening to me and what I can do to prevent it?

Thank you!
Cindy

Cindy,

There are a number of potential reasons for your developing a cold after each dive, but ultimately something is lowering your immune system to the point that a cold is able to take hold. First of all, I am not a doctor, but I have only had one cold in the last 3 years, and no other sickness. Make sure you are not anemic. Check with your doctor; he may want to run a simple blood test to check your hematocrit level. Take vitamins, and in particular, B complex and C vitamins. B complex vitamins do a lot of good things for the body, and C can help your body fight a cold.

 

[TSandM]

The folks above are right. Exposure to cold temperatures has nothing to do with getting sick (that's been tested).

But I have to ask -- Did you get a cold, or did you have some nasal drainage and sinus stuffiness? The latter can be due to barotrauma and to getting pool water into the nose. If you had a full-blown cold, with nasal congestion and drainage, sore throat, and/or cough, then you had been exposed to a virus. The incubation period for most viral illnesses is in the neighborhood of a week, so if your symptoms occurred sooner than that after your dives, it's highly unlikely that anything related to the diving class was a contributing cause to the cold.

This is cold season . . . The viruses survive better to be transmitted when the weather is cold, and people are packed together indoors.

 

[fisherdvm]

The folks above are right. Exposure to cold temperatures has nothing to do with getting sick (that's been tested).

I tend to disagree with this assessment. After all, we do have defined entities: cold induced asthma, cold induced urticaria.... Therefore, cold induced sinus congestion, rhinitis, and conjunctivitis might not be too far off. All might be due to cold induced mast cell degranulation, or other mechanisms that we have not defined.

I tend to get nasal and sinus congestion, with sneezing when chilled. This has happened since I was a kid. So, while one might not get viral infection from just being cold. But having symptoms of a cold might be induced by hypothermia, in some individuals.

 

[driftwood]

Hello,
I've only had 2 confined water dives here (I'm taking my Open water certification) and each time I got a cold. Can anyone help me explain why that may be happening to me and what I can do to prevent it?

Thank you!
Cindy

Cindy,

My first thought is to blow you nose after a dive. It's not ladylike, but our sinuses were not designed by nature for diving. It may be just that simple.

 

[emttim]

I tend to disagree with this assessment. After all, we do have defined entities: cold induced asthma, cold induced urticaria.... Therefore, cold induced sinus congestion, rhinitis, and conjunctivitis might not be too far off. All might be due to cold induced mast cell degranulation, or other mechanisms that we have not defined.

I tend to get nasal and sinus congestion, with sneezing when chilled. This has happened since I was a kid. So, while one might not get viral infection from just being cold. But having symptoms of a cold might be induced by hypothermia, in some individuals.

This is partially inaccurate. A cold environment or a cold temperature will never directly cause you to get sick; that statement was technically correct. In fact, outside of hypothermia, there is virtually nothing I can think of that would affect your body as far as cold temperatures goes. The reason people think being "out in the cold" can make you sick is that as your core body temperature lowers, your immune system is weakened, which then of course will make you more susceptible to illnesses such as the common cold, flu, etc.

To the OP, what you can do is make sure that your exposure protection fits well so that you're not getting hypothermic to some degree in the pool, and also when you strip off your wetsuit (or take part of it off) during any surface interval inbetween the next session (not sure if you guys do more than one session a day) that you cover your body adequately with a t-shirt, hoodie, whatever in order to stay warm.

What is probably happening is that you're getting hypothermic from an underlying cause such as that stated above by me and other posters, and that your immune system is getting weakened enough to where you're getting sick. The best thing you can do since a cold is viral and antibiotics won't help is to take vitamin C, eat healthy, and make sure you stay as warm as possible. What kind of temperature is the water where you're training? If you need a heavier wetsuit, make sure you get that worked out before you do your cert dives. I know all about cold water and I couldn't imagine doing it in anything less than 7mm. Hope it helps.

 

[TSandM]

In fact, hypothermia does NOT affect your immune system and does NOT increase your susceptibility to respiratory viruses. That's actually been studied. They took people and put them in cold rooms until they shivered, and sprayed them with viral aerosols. There was no difference between the chilled and unchilled people, in terms of the number who came down with colds.

Fisherdvm, I suppose it's conceivable that cold air could cause congestion, but that is NOT a cold. It's nasal congestion. That's why I asked the questions I did of the OP.