Question for all the great minds in here

[Trauma-san]

You catch a cold from a Virus, right?

My dad always told me if you sleep with a fan blowing on you at night, you'll catch a cold.  Silliness, I thought; you catch a cold from a virus, not from being cold.

Well, it's been pretty warm lately so I bought a little fan for my room, and then set it up to blow around.  After 3 nights of sleeping under it, I'm sick as a motherfucker, and a week and a half later, I'm still sick.

So; how did I catch a head cold just from being cold? 

[Lincoln]

I'm no biological expert, but perhaps being cold makes your body more supsceptible (I know spelling is way off) to allow for viruses to enter in.

[Trauma-san]

Yeah, but immediately?  That doesn't make sense to me either. 

Here's me just rambling about that:

Certainly I imagine that there are viruses in the air all around us, and that our body fights them off constantly. 

I would think, though, that your immune system would have to be down for a long damn time for a virus to take hold, wouldn't it?  I wouldn't think I could be cold for 6 hours or so, and that would be long enough for a virus to infect my body... even if my immune system was completely shut down all night, you'd think it'd kick back in in the morning when I warmed up and go to work.  Plus, I sleep under covers so the rest of my body was warm. 

[Lincoln]

Well it could be that you already had the virus, just not to an extent that you notice. Just like all the food we eat, all the dishes we use have germs on them. They're just taken down to a safe level. You could have some virus trace in you that attacked your body while you got cold and therefore more vulnerable.

[Fuck You, Pay Me]

Actually there are many different types of viruses that can cause a person to catch a cold, but some are more prevalent during the cooler seasons, others during the warmer ones. It has a lot to do with the change in relative humidity, and the viruses that are most commonly causing a person to catch a cold survive better in low humidity - cooler weather.

So if you turned your fan on, and helped relieve yourself of that humidity, you helped a virus stay alive and get into your body... that's just me talking out of my ass... taking a guess.

[J Bananas]

*I think* the reason you caught a cold from sleeping by the fan is because you did indeed catch a virus, and what better to circuate a virus in the surrounding area than with a fan. If you were sleeping near it, a virus easily could have made its way into the draft heading to your body.

[Suga Foot]

it could be that your body was too busy keeping you warm and a virus slipped past the guards.

or coincidence.

[Fuck You, Pay Me]

Also... my professor was talking about how when your nose is cool... it lowers the resistance to infection.... has something to do with the lining. He explained that this is the reason why we still catch colds even if we cover up and wear thick clothing during the cold weather.

[Shallow]

I don't know if this helps but I have slept with a fan on me for the past 3 weeks straight and I have no sign of a cold. I wake up feeling chilly, but not sick.

Maybe you got the virus from somewhere else and it's just a co-incidence that it was the same day. Unless it was psychological. I've heard that can happen.

[Fuck You, Pay Me]

Infinite says it's because you're an infidel.

[mauzip]

You have AIDS.

[Fuck You, Pay Me]

You have AIDS.

Mauzip, just because you realized you had AIDS around the same time you caught a cold, doesn't mean the two are correlated. You have AIDS because you're a gay motherfucker who takes it up the ass too much, not because you left a fan on.

[mauzip]

Janal, I hope you get banned again.

[We Fly High]

yeah its pretty much being cold makes your immune system more prone to viruses. like easier to defeat. but its not the cold that actually makes you sick.

[Low Key]

It could be because the fan isn't clean and it's blowing stuff everywhere.