Should You Exercise When You Are Sick?

Saw this great article in Time Magazine and the answer is that it depends!

When suffering from flu or some other fever-causing infection, the immune system is working overtime to fight off that infection. Exercise is a form of physical stress that makes the immune system’s task more difficult.

There may be far more serious consequences.

In the 1990s, researchers in Australia found evidence that some athletes who continued to exercise while suffering from flu developed a form of chronic fatigue syndrome that, in some cases, stuck around for several years. “These are painful case histories to read,” Nieman says. “We don’t know exactly what’s going on, but my belief is that the virus spreads throughout the body in a subclinical form and engages the immune system and makes the individual feel tired.”