I swam regularly (3-4 x/week) for approximately 5 years and had laid off for the past 7 months. Thankfully I'm back in the pool again. I am relatively healthy and have missed almost no work. However, whenever I get out of the pool I have cold symptoms--congestion, running nose, sneezing, etc. I know I probably swallow my share of water, and I've learned to live with these nuisances, but are these symptoms common for others?
Parents
Former Member
We should all understand what is happening. The same water that causes our body hair to dissolve, dry our skin, and make itchy skin is getting into contact with sensitive internal skin/nasal structures. The body responds, very reasonably, with sneezing to expel the irritant and mucus to wash it away and further protect the nose/sinuses.
You may take medication to reduce the body's natural response to this irritant, but as Craig points out, the irritant is still there, and it is still doing the nasty stuff, now against a body with even less protection than it had before. While the symptoms are gone, the fundamental problem is still there. This water is not some normally harmless pollen that the body has mistakenly decided is an antigenic threat, but a real threat.
Is that what you want? A lifetime of experimentation to see what happens to a nose constantly attacked and irritated? While I think Masters Swimming is a great and new experiment in very active senior lifestyle, this is one aspect of the experiment I think we can all do without.
We should all understand what is happening. The same water that causes our body hair to dissolve, dry our skin, and make itchy skin is getting into contact with sensitive internal skin/nasal structures. The body responds, very reasonably, with sneezing to expel the irritant and mucus to wash it away and further protect the nose/sinuses.
You may take medication to reduce the body's natural response to this irritant, but as Craig points out, the irritant is still there, and it is still doing the nasty stuff, now against a body with even less protection than it had before. While the symptoms are gone, the fundamental problem is still there. This water is not some normally harmless pollen that the body has mistakenly decided is an antigenic threat, but a real threat.
Is that what you want? A lifetime of experimentation to see what happens to a nose constantly attacked and irritated? While I think Masters Swimming is a great and new experiment in very active senior lifestyle, this is one aspect of the experiment I think we can all do without.
