Does going out with wet hair make you ill?

[Mrsknackered]

DP is convinced this is why I get ill.

Thoughts?

I'll be sharing responses with him

Yes indeed and if you keep wearing your coat indoors you won’t feel the benefit of it when you go outside. The latter also causes the bubonic plague.

I took the bins out this morning with wet hair. I ran the whole way so I wouldn't die.

I used to read old English novels where if a well off woman got caught in the rain, she would inevitably get a bad cold and either die or nearly die.

Going out with wet hair doesn’t make you ill. Look at people who go swimming in the sea - they’re outside with wet hair for ages. Most of them won’t get sick.

However, if you are exposed to a virus while you are cold (and having a wet head will cause more heat loss) you are more likely to develop symptoms with it. There’s been a fair bit of research that shows that being cold makes it more likely that you’ll go down with a cold (immune system works better at body temp). People who are cooled for medical reasons (after resus from cardiac arrest for example) almost always develop a chest infection when they are rewarmed.

So the wet hair won’t make you sick, but the associated cooling that goes with it may make you more susceptible to illness.

When I was still working I often washed my hair on the morning and drove to work with either the windows down or the roof back, dry when I arrived.

I think if its really cold outside it might bring on a headache but defo wont make you catch a virus

Blimey Tang! Where are you? When my hair froze it was at the balmy temp of minus 4 or so and my hair would bend with a slushy crunch. Anything lower than minus 35 and things get weird...

isn't it that you are cold and less likely to fend off germs.
iir, we learned this at school

I often go out with wet hair, and I’m so rarely ill that I can count the number of days I’ve ever had off work or school on the fingers of both hands.

I went outside with wet hair in minus 30 degrees and it froze, it was the most peculiar thing! However I didn't subsequently develop a cold... Although it took my hairdresser back in Blighty some time to sort out the mess my hair had got into with all the bits that broke off when I foolishly tried to push it back out of my face while still frozen.

No - have done it all my life. Have very thick hair. It was waist length and even thicker when I was younger. If I'd tried to dry it before going out I'd never have got out the door.

No! I used to swim 6 days per week as a teenager and never dried my hair after training. I go to the gym most days now and depart to work with wet-hair (partly to save time and partly because I have curly hair which doesn't take kindly to being dried......the pom-pom with legs look is cute on dogs, less good on humans). I'm not ill any more often than the average person.