You know the cold I'm talking about, the sniffling, sneezing, coughing, sinus pressure-kind of head cold that can drive you to bed begging for chicken noodle soup. You don't have a fever or major chest congestion, but you feel like crap. You start buying vitamin C, and the only thing you can smell is a Halls lozenge.

What about fitness -- will it help or hurt? The NYT recently highlighted two decade-old studies that revealed fitness and head colds mix just fine together. The two studies answered the following questions:

• Does a cold affect your ability to exercise? Researchers dripped the rhinovirus into 45 lucky 18-29 year-olds of varying fitness levels. I hope they were paid a boatload for this study. They all caught a head cold, then jumped on treadmills during the worst of their symptoms for moderate and intense workouts. Lung function, exercise capacity and metabolic response were not affected.
• Does exercising with a cold affect your symptoms and recovery time? Again, drip, drip went the rhinovirus into subjects, some assigned to exercise moderately for 40 minutes every other day, and others assigned to rest. There was no difference between both groups' symptoms and recovery time. The researchers actually weighed their used tissues -- gross. However, exercisers self-reported they felt OK, and some even felt better.

Next time you have a head cold (not the fever with chest congestion-kind), cuddle in bed with a mug of soup if you need to, then head to the gym. Would you exercise? Let us know in the poll below. But please, use that disinfectant spray so your ick doesn't infect the rest of us.

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