Pukie paid a visit.

Well, today was not my best day, but it was a good day. Going to post what the wod was later, but right now I'll talk about the experience. After being out with the flu for 10 days, I was surprised with how hard it was to breath. I still have some congestion in my chest, and crossfit proved that pretty quick. I went through the first round ok, the TGU's were my bottleneck. I spent a LOT of time working on those, everything else was ok. I had to break up the KB swings of 72 lbs. Jerry was telling me how it was just 15 reps, but I just couldn't get enough air, and it really threw me off. After going through the first round, all of my heavy breathing brouhgt out the congestion in my lungs. All that phlem moved out of my lungs and into my esophogus. When that happned, my stomach got a little confused, resulting in me puking in the bathroom for a while.

After I got that out of my system, I tried my second round. Did the burpees ok, and then I did one wallball. After that wall ball, I had to go puke a little more. I ended up only doing two sets, and I made the second set only 9 reps.

Jerry commented on how this exercise "cleared out the cobwebs," and I think that was a pretty good description. Afterwards I definitely felt like my lungs had been cleared out of some lingering congestion.

Should one exercise with the flu?

So I've been doing a little research about exercising with the flu and have found some interesting stuff:

1. According to one UK study, exercise boosts the effectiveness of a flu shot:

Exercising the muscle where your flu shot is injected may improve the immune system's response to the vaccine, UK researchers report.

And that study concerns itself with exercising only once. Our next study concerns a couple of times...

2. Exercise helps prevent the flu from killing mice. An Illinois study infected mice with influenza, took half and exercised them and took the other half and did nothing.

20-week-old mice that had exercised had significantly (p=0.008) higher survival rates (18 of 22) versus HCC of the same age (10 of 22). However, 11- to 16-week-old mice didn't show a significantly higher survival rate. When all EX mice (47) were compared with all HCC mice (48), EX had twice the survival rate, 59% vs. 29.4% (p=0.003). None of the variables (food/water intake, random activity or symptom severity) proved to be reliable at predicting mortality. However, severe lethargy was apparent one to two days prior to death. And while there was a "marked, age-dependent effect on mortality, there was no effect at all on morbidity, which was somewhat surprising," Woods said.

Note the mice were exercised only until they were symptomatic, so working out while down with the flu doesn't do anything, but it does show that exercise boosts the immune system.

2. According to another article, you should not workout with an infection or a high fever. As one would think, exercising with a fever excessively works your heart:

your heart has to pump blood to your muscles to supply them with oxygen. It also has to pump blood from your muscles to your skin where the heat is dissipated. When you have a fever, your heart has to work extra hard to get rid of extra heat. Furthermore, some viruses that infect your nose and throat can also infect your heart muscle. The combination of the extra work and an infected heart muscle could cause irregular heart beats. You won't lose much conditioning unless you take off for more than a week.

I'm not sure if I should work out while I don't have a fever, (Currently I wake up w/out a fever and get one at night), but I really don't want to work out feeling like I do. That leads me to my next little nugget of info...

3. That same article says that exercise will neither speed nor slow recovery from the flu:

During World War II, American soldiers were drafted and sent to do their basic training at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center before they were sent to fight in Europe. A major epidemic of flu occurred affecting almost all the troops. Half of the soldiers were kept in bed, while the other half stayed in the vigorous exercise of basic training. Both groups required the same amount of time to recover, although those forced to undergo the rigorous demands of preparing for war complained more.

Can't say I blame them for complaining, I still feel like crap.