The mystery of the "nighttime cold"

[Tattila the Hun]

Occam's razor suggests... vampire cold. Uhhuh.

[Lorizael]

To add on to what Kuci said, there may be bias in your perception here. It's pretty likely that you are unaware of or do not take note of all the times that your colds do not get worse at night.

[Japher]

just do like I do, and live on Nyquil or any other medication that is 90% alcohol. That way you won't notice.

[LordShiva]

double penetration

[LordShiva]

I once mistakenly took Nyquil during teh day

[Lorizael]

I once saw LS do a DP when he wanted to do an edit instead.

[Garth Vader]

Has nobody else noticed this? My colds are always worse at night too.

[Jon Miller]

I think that I have heard that there is a good reason for this. Something about the bodies healing/etc changing based upon time of day.

JM

[Jon Miller]

Talking to someone else, apparently fevers get stronger in the evening?

JM

[Whoha]

Re: The mystery of the "nighttime cold"

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
I've got a cold -- no biggie, get them a couple of times a year. But my cold's usually have the same feature -- they get worse the minute the sun goes down. They're liek vampire colds, or something.

Now, I have no idea why this is, but assumed that it has something to do with either change in temerature or change in light. I don't know why those would affect my cold, but it's not like lots of other things change at sunset, so those were my best guesses.

Until yesterday. Yesterday I was shopping at Ikea after work. I was deep in the bowels of the store -- if you know Ikea, you know what I mean -- when suddenly (and I mean suddenly, like someone flipped a switch) I went from being just fine to being super-congested and constricted. Once a violent coughing spasm (the first of the day) had passed, I looked at my watch. Yep, 7:10 pm -- sunset.

But here's the thing: I was deep in the bowels of Ikea, so I had no clue it was sunset. No windows, so no visual clues; in full climate control, so no temperature clues. My body just knew.

Does this happen to anyone else when they have a cold? Does anyone know what causes it? Am I possessed by a demon spirit who keeps the same hours as Paris Hilton? WTF is this?

cold or flu-like symptoms?

and as to knowing the day:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Talking to someone else, apparently fevers get stronger in the evening?

And if you don't talk to anyone else, it gets weaker in teh evening

[snoopy369]

My guess is a pretty simple one: it gets colder at night, usually. More specifically, it gets colder and drier at night. Your lungs work better when it is humid; so when night-time hits and the air cools, it dries out a bit, and so your lungs don't work as well - hence you notice the congestion more.

Try a humidifier at home. That should fix things nicely

This is why the 'summertime cold' is a big problem in the modern day, but was unheard of before the 1950s. It's generally more humid in the summer = less colds, right? Except for one thing... A/C. Most A/C's are dehumidifiers; they removes moisture from the air very quickly (and is one of the reasons they work - you have less humidity, so your body's ability to cool itself is greater, above and beyond the actual cooling of air.) Most people have the A/C on fairly high when they go to sleep, and breathe very dry air ... I never had summer colds in New Mexico (where a swamp cooler, or humidifying air conditioner, is the norm since humidity isn't a problem) but have them all the time now in Chicago (where a swamp cooler would be counterproductive).

Assuming this was true in Singapore (where I presume it's very humid all the time), I would guess A/C is the reason for it being true there.

[Jon Miller]

I was thinking that might be why I am so thirsty in the summer despite it being humid out and me being inside a lot (whwere it isn't hot).

JM

[Chemical Ollie]

IKEA furniture is made by child labour in Africa, and all the casualties are boiled into glue that is used as binder agent in the wood pulp that makes up the wooden board.

You have caught some unknown African virus, that's what you deserve from shopping cheap furniture.

So much for liberalsim...

[Darius871]

When the same thing happened to me, my unfounded assumption was that it's really just a result of being up longer; the more hours you breathe at a normal rate, the more mucous builds up. In other words, it would get worse around the ~10th hour of your day awake even if you work the graveyard shift and that 10th hour occurs at 7AM. Then, when you sleep, your body clears the gunk out of your lungs and you start fresh again the next day. I have absolutely no scientific evidence or experience to back this up, but it's certainly correct nonetheless.