Hey everyone, welcome to today's episode of the Run to the Top Extra Kick daily podcast.

I'm excited to be talking to you guys today.

I hope you're safe and well.

I hope you're enjoying some nice weather as am I and if it's not nice

where you are I just hope that you are finding some fun things to keep you occupied

indoors so what do I want to talk about today? Well the question

I want to answer is one that I get asked fairly regularly and it's one that's probably

a worry on everyone's mind at this time and that is does

hard-running suppress the immune system well it's a common thought and you know

there's some like anecdotal evidence to suggest this, but I really want to

reassure you guys today because recent studies have actually bought this into question.

Now of course if you're over training and you

really run down and you're not sleeping and you're not fueling enough then yeah

it's going to suppress your immune system but does hard running in the context of normal healthy training

actually suppress the immune system? And really reassuring is the fact that the answers to this question

is probably no. So the basis of these thoughts are the studies

from the 80s and 90s which threw up a suggested link between runners taking part in races and

subsequently getting upper respiratory tracked infections and other studies

sort of decrease in immune cells called lymphocytes in the blood

after hard workouts but there were caveats to these studies in that post-race

infections were self-reported and rates have actually verified

infections were a lot lower and don't forget that a race also brings a lot of

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