How Strenuous Exercise Affects Our Immune System

AP Bio

Olivia Scotti

Current Event #23

Reynolds, Gretchen. “How Strenuous Exercise Affects Our Immune System.” The New York

Times, The New York Times, 25 Apr. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/well/move/how-strenuous-exercise-affects-our-immune-system.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fhealth&action=click&contentCollection=health®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=sectionfront.

For my current event this week I read the article “How Strenuous Exercise Affects Our Immune System.” This article discusses how strenuous exercise like running a marathon affects the immune system. The article started off by talking about how throughout time people believed that participating in a strenuous exercise would lead to a weakened immune system. However, recently scientists at the University of Bath in England believed exercise could not lead to a suppressed immune system. With the help of their updated scientific techniques they discovered that “ But newer experiments that actually tested saliva showed that less than a third of marathon runners who thought they had caught a cold actually had. Statistically, their odds of becoming sick were about the same as for anyone else in the race’s host city.” This demonstrates how the immune system could not have been weakened because everyone in the ame area had the same odds of getting sick. The article continued by discussing studies done on animals immune cells. In this study they tracked the movement of the immune cells through the bloodstream. They found that “In essence, the rodents’ immune systems had bolstered their defenses in vulnerable areas of the body after exercise by directing cells from the blood.” Although this taught them about the immune system they could not be positive it would be the same in a human's immune system.

Most people typically exercise so understanding how different workouts affect the immune system is prevalent to almost everyone’s life. Also everyone has gotten a cold in their live so it's interesting to understand what is causing that and how are body reacts. Most people don't run marathons but putting some strain on the body can affect the immune system and its important we understand that. Although this topic is not something that will change are daily lives it is valuable to understand how are immune system can change from justin running, biking, or any other exercise you partake in. I believe it is of value for people to continue to exercise because it could help the immune system but also it improves our overall health.

Overall I felt this article had many strengths and weaknesses. Some of the strengths of this article was the many quotes the author added from outside sources. Not only did it make this article more credible but also made the article more interesting. Another strength of this article was the incorporation of the many studies conducted about this topic. Although this article had many strengths their were some weaknesses that hurt the article. One thing that this article lacked was a definite conclusion on the study. Also I wish the article had explained each of the studies in more detail so the reader could understand the topic more. Ways that this article could be improved is by adding more information on what modern technology has discovered about the immune system. Also the consequences of having a weakened immune system.