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 If you ask a question: what time of the year so-called "flu", "colds" diseases occur most often, the majority will answer without hesitation: in winter.
This answer is basically correct and requires some clarification.
It has long been noticed that there are two, albeit short, but dangerous periods, during which these diseases affect people more often than in winter. What are these periods? Early spring and late autumn.
The fact is that in the human body, thanks to the metabolism that does not stop for a second, a certain amount of heat is constantly generated. Body temperature under normal conditions remains constant. As you know, in the armpit, it is equal to 36 - 37 degrees.
But the amount of heat generated is not constant - it depends on many reasons, including the external environment in which the person was. And the colder the air, the more heat is generated in the body. By responding in this way with increased heat production, the body protects itself from excessive exposure to cold.
During the summer and winter seasons, each of which has certain climatic characteristics, the body temperature remains constant. But when summer is replaced by cold autumn days, and after winter is capricious spring weather, various changes also occur in the body.
Nerve endings, scattered throughout the skin, perceive changes in ambient temperature and communicate them to the cerebral cortex along the nerve pathways. The central nervous system, responsive to all changes, responds to these signals by restructuring metabolism and a number of other protective reactions. As a result, you get used to new atmospheric conditions.
During these periods of restructuring, when the body is gradually adapting to new conditions, it is especially susceptible to adverse environmental influences. With the onset of summer and winter, the restructuring is completed. Therefore, even in winter frosts, people are less likely to catch colds than in the days of autumn and spring bad weather, despite the fact that the air temperature at this time can be above zero.
It is known that in spring and autumn the weather changes abruptly and unexpectedly. Often piercing winds blow, the air temperature, its humidity change, and, moreover, very noticeably, often several times a day.
Naturally, a person in a cold, moisture-saturated atmosphere gives off heat more intensely than in warm dry air. But the release of heat increases significantly when air movement occurs. Therefore, if in cold, damp weather, when the wind is blowing, the body is not sufficiently protected, it can lose so much heat that hypothermia of the body sets in. Is it dangerous?
It is dangerous for those who are not engaged in systematic hardening, constantly wrapping themselves up, afraid of the open window, in which from the mere memory of cold water "goosebumps" begin to run through their bodies. And for those who tempered themselves, the cold is not terrible - their body will withstand the loss of heat.
Hypothermia is the main cause of colds. Moreover, this does not require a very low, long-term temperature, such as frost of one degree or another. A sudden drop of a few degrees in the "comfortable", habitual external temperature is enough to induce a cold. There are cases when people, falling into cold water, fell ill with pneumonia, although they were in it for a short time.
But it is not necessary to cool the whole body. For some, it is enough to step with an bare foot on the floor to quickly get sick with a runny nose, pharyngitis, bronchitis.Others should spend a short time in a draft in order to get a runny nose, hoarseness, and start coughing. Legs are most sensitive to cold, especially feet, soles of feet. There are people with the greatest sensitivity to cooling of other parts of the body - neck, head, back.
Why does a cold facilitate the onset and exacerbation of various diseases, including the respiratory system?
The fact is that cooling the body leads to its weakening: resistance decreases, resistance to pathogenic microbes decreases. An interesting experiment was made by the famous French scientist Pasteur on chicken, which is naturally immune to anthrax infection. Pasteur "chilled" the chicken by immersing its feet in cold water. After that, he managed to induce anthrax in her.
The Soviet scientist M.E. Marshak proved that if a person's feet are immersed in cold water, for example, at a temperature of 15 degrees, then, in the nasal mucosa, changes in blood circulation, vasodilation and blood flow immediately occur. There are observations suggesting that similar changes occur in other parts of the respiratory tract.
A rush of blood to the mucous membranes of the nose, nasopharynx, pharynx leads to increased activity of the mucus secreting glands in them, and an increase in local temperature. Thus, favorable conditions arise for the development of microorganisms that enter the mucous membrane from the outside, but mainly permanently live here. Usually these microbes do no harm, but in favorable conditions they begin to multiply intensively. A rapid increase in the number of microbes and a simultaneous weakening of the body's resistance lead to the emergence of diseases, in particular inflammatory processes in the respiratory apparatus.
In observations carried out by us and other researchers, it was shown that with artificially induced colds, for example, when the legs are cooled, it is cold! water (temperature plus 4 degrees), a rapid reproduction of microbes living in the pharynx and nasopharynx of a person begins. Moreover, such bacteria appear, which could not be detected before cooling. A significant increase in the number of microbes can be seen as early as 18 hours after a cold.
Acute, so-called "colds", diseases affecting the human respiratory system are massive, the most common among the population. These include influenza, inflammation of the upper respiratory tract (i.e. nose, nasopharynx, larynx, windpipe, trachea, bronchi), tonsillitis, and pneumonia.
 Can the development of these diseases be prevented? Can. For this, it is necessary, firstly, to protect oneself from the harmful effects of unfavorable environmental conditions, and, secondly, to strengthen the body's defenses, its resistance to any disease-causing principle.
People who are not yet sufficiently tempered to prevent the cooling of the body, which is harmful to them, should avoid drafts, dress appropriately for the air temperature, and especially protect their feet from cold and dampness.
And resistance against colds - hardening - occurs after accustoming the body to cold and other unfavorable meteorological factors. Observations have shown that if you daily expose your feet to a cold bath (plus 15 degrees), then after a few days the rise in the temperature of the nasal mucosa and the secretion of nasal mucus stop, since the body adapts to this temperature. In order to get similar changes in the mucous membrane again, you need to lower the temperature of the foot bath, for example, to 12 degrees. But with repeated use of such a bath, and it ceases to cause a reaction. Consequently, with a gradual decrease in temperature, the body gets used to cold water and develops immunity to colds.
The soles of the feet are known to be the most sensitive to cold in many people.However, people who are accustomed to walking barefoot not only in summer, but also in late autumn, become insensitive to the cold and do not catch a cold even when they walk barefoot in the snow in winter. Many people are probably familiar with people who swim until late autumn, despite the low temperature of the water, and some continue to swim in ice holes in winter. These people not only do not catch colds, but, on the contrary, feel very good after bathing in ice will.
Therefore, you can harden yourself against colds. Training should be carried out all your life: from childhood to old age. But (you can start it at any age. It is necessary to act with water (rubdown, shower) on the entire skin of the body, not limited to the "procedure" to the waist, as many do. The latter, of course, is useful, but does not harden enough. You should start with a temperature, which does not cause unpleasant sensations of cold, for example, at 27-25 degrees, and gradually reduce it by 1-0.5 degrees as you get used to it, so you can bring the water temperature to rather low numbers (15-12 degrees and less).
Physical culture and various sports azides, both summer and winter, are useful for hardening. However, physical culture alone, without special training of the skin to the effects of cold, is not enough.
People with respiratory diseases often carry them again throughout the year. They call their illness "the flu" and they say they "get the flu" several times a year, sometimes monthly or more often. What's the matter here? What is this "flu" that they get so often? Is it the flu?
Real, real flu is an acute infectious disease, the causative agent of which is. certain viruses are extremely small organisms, visible only through a special electron microscope at a magnification of thousands of times. There are several types of influenza pathogens, denoted by the letters of the Latin alphabet: virus type A, type B, type C. Having been ill with the flu, a person becomes immune to re-infection for 1-2 years. But this immunity is created only to that type (the causative agent that caused the disease. For example, having had influenza type A, a person is not guaranteed that in a few days he may become infected with influenza type B or C.
But although more than one type of influenza pathogen is known, there are still not so many of them that you can get sick with them every month, as some people complain about. Therefore, here we are talking about some other disease, and not about the true flu.
What are repetitive “flu”?
The study of this issue has shown that cases of "flu" or "acute catarrh of the upper respiratory tract" so often determined by the patients or doctors themselves are usually exacerbations of chronic diseases, mainly of certain parts of the respiratory system (chronic inflammation of the nose and its paranasal sinuses, nasopharynx, throat, pharyngeal tonsils, bronchi, trachea, lungs).
Exacerbations occur under the influence of unfavorable external conditions (cold, dampness, drafts, dust) or due to the general condition of the body (overwork, lack of sleep, violation of the diet, nervous shocks).
And since such conditions can occur many times during the year (especially in cold seasons), then there are many patients with repeated frequent "flu". Such people should be especially well aware of the dangers that lie in wait for them in bad weather. All of them are strongly advised to eliminate, as far as possible, the sources of chronic disease processes. This will get rid of foci of infections that constantly weaken the body, ready to flare up in any unfavorable conditions for it. And the subsequent systematic hardening, which must be carried out under the supervision of a doctor, and strict adherence to all hygiene rules will strengthen and maintain health.
Then, in any weather, you can consider yourself guaranteed against colds and its consequences.
Professor F.G.Epstein, Health Magazine, 1957
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