A question that people (including myself) are asking more and more as the novel coronavirus spreads.
by someone not displaying symptoms, many people are wondering if there’s anything they can do to improve their chances of fighting off the virus, especially if they come into contact with it without even knowing they’ve been exposed.
Here’s what’s happening: When you engage in any kind of physical activity that gets your heart rate up for a sustained amount of time—say, a 30-minute brisk walk or jog, a bike ride, or even some tennis volleying—your body senses it as a type of physiological stressor. As a result, it deploys certain types of white blood cells like neutrophils and lymphocytes from different parts of your body to flood your bloodstream.
“They go off to other tissues in the body, like the lungs or maybe the skin, intestines, or mucosal surfaces, where an infection might be found,” Turner says. That’s a question that’s been hotly debated for years, and as with many questions in the field of science, there isn’t exactly a consensus on the answer. According to Nieman, vigorous exercise of a long duration—think 90 minutes or more, like you’re racing a half marathon or a marathon—starts to over-stress your immune system, which can temporarily impair its ability to do its job and leave you more vulnerable to infection during this time. That’s what’s known as the open window hypothesis.
“You are exposed to thousands of people there,” Turner says—so those who are sick with viral or bacterial infections can subsequently transmit them to you. That can be directly through nasal droplets that enter your nose or mouth, like through another person’s cough or sneeze, or by touching a surface that a person who is sick has touched and then touching your own mouth, nose, or eyes.
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