MOTHERS and grandmothers the world over can feel vindicated today after their advice to “wrap up warm or you’ll catch a cold” was backed by scientific research.

For years the theory that chilling the surface of the body, through wet clothes, feet and hair, can lead to illness has been dismissed as an old wives’ tale with no scientific basis.

Now researchers from the Common Cold Centre at Cardiff University appear to have shown that being chilly really can cause a cold to develop.

Ron Eccles and Claire Johnson recruited 180 volunteers to take part in their five-day study during the city’s common cold season.

Half of the participants immersed their feet in bowls of ice-cold water for 20 minutes. The others sat with their feet in empty bowls. Over the next few days, almost a third of the chilled volunteers developed cold symptoms, compared with fewer than one in ten in the control group.

Professor Eccles said: “When colds are circulating in the community many people are mildly infected but show no symptoms. If they become chilled this causes a pronounced constriction of the blood vessels in the nose and shuts off the warm blood that supplies the white cells that fight infection.

“The reduced defences in the nose allow the virus to get stronger and common cold symptoms develop. Although the chilled subject believes they have ‘caught a cold’, what has in fact happened is that the dormant infection has taken hold.”

Cold symptoms include a low fever, a slight headache, runny nose, sore throat and a feeling of tiredness.

Writing in the journal Family Practice, the researchers said that more instances of colds in winter than in summer could be linked to the increased number of people who are chilly. But another explanation could be that people’s noses are colder at this time of year.

“When the cold weather comes we wrap ourselves up in winter coats to keep warm but our nose is directly exposed to the cold air,” Professor Eccles said. “Mothers can now be confident in their advice to children to wrap up well in winter.”

It is estimated that adults catch between two and five colds per year and school children may experience seven to ten colds each year.

More than 200 types of cold viruses and two or three flu strains circulate every 12 months. As we get older our immune system learns how to deal with more and more viruses because we generate antibodies each time we get a cold.

COLD COMFORTS

• Feed a cold, starve a fever Skipping breakfast increases your risk of flu, a study by Cardiff University suggests. Researchers say that eating in the morning boosts immunity
  
  
• Drink chicken soup The suggestion that chicken soup provides cold relief came from a study published in the medical journal Chest in 1978
  
  
• Have a glass of red wine Two glasses of red wine a day can protect you from colds and flu, according to Spanish scientists
  
  
• Be patient Colds can last from a couple of days to three weeks, or even longer if the virus goes to your chest

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