Parents and winter colds

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Monday, July 09, 2012

Your kids are keeping you healthy this winter!

Researchers have found that parents are 52 per cent less likely to develop a cold than people with no children and the more children you have, the stronger the affect. Parents with one or two children are 48 per cent less likely to get sick and those with three or more children are 61 per cent less likely to develop a cold.

Even if your offspring live away from home, you'll still be tougher in the face of the lurgi!

The researchers reckon It's not that you have a stronger immune system - it's your 'mental toughness'.

In the words of the study's author, 'Although parenthood was clearly protective, we were unable to identify an explanation for this association.

'Because we controlled for immunity to the virus, we know that these differences did not occur just because the parents were more likely to have been exposed to the virus through their children.

'Moreover, parents and nonparents showed few psychological or biological differences, and those that did exist could not explain the benefit of parenthood.

'We expect that a psychological benefit of parenthood that we did not measure may have been responsible.'

For the study,the team exposed 795 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 55 to a virus that causes a common cold.

Immunity to the experimental virus, viral strain, season, age, sex, race, ethnicity, marital status, body mass, employment status and education, were taken into account.

So there you go - something to thank your kids for on a cold winter's day!