Stay warm!

Your mother and grandmother were right. Being exposed to cold temperatures can cause you to be more susceptible to the viruses that cause the common cold.

Lead study author Dr. Ellen Foxman, a researcher at Yale University School of Medicine, and her colleagues, set out to investigate how temperature can affect immune response.

The researchers studied how a mouse-adapted cold virus fared in the rodent nasal cavity -- which typically is a temperature of 91 to 95 degrees -- and compared that to viral spread within the lungs -- which have a temperature of 98.6 degrees.

What they discovered was that when a virus invaded warmer cells, the host cells produced significantly more interferons -- proteins that "interfere" with the spread of a virus by warning healthy cells of its presence and setting off an immune response.

In the cooler nasal cavity cells, this warning system was less efficient however, and allowed the virus to spread more easily.

Read more here.
Thanks to Scott Ott