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Why are head colds always worse at night?

You know what I mean. You're doing OK during the day- minimal sneezing, an ability to breathe out of at least one nostril. Just when you're thinking, hey wow, look guys, I think I'm getting better. I think I WILL go bowling with y'all! Then evening sets in and you are mouth-breathing all over everyone and everything and sneezing continually into your sleeve. Why?

Marr asked in Aches, Pains & Illness about 1 year ago | Report

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3 Answers

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    Barak Gaster, MD

    There are probably a few factors which could contribute:

    1. Probably the most important is simply fatigue at the end of the day weakening your body's compensating mechanisms. During the day, these mechanisms were allowing you to keep yourself together and overcome the illness and function through it, but at night as you get tired, these "hold up the fort" mechanisms start to falter, allowing the symptoms of the illness to come to the fore and seem to worsen.

    2. Another possible factor is that starting to feel better leads you to push yourself too early, to exert yourself more, especially into settings that are more demanding, stressful, noisy, or cold or smoke/alcohol laced, leading to an over-doing-it-too-soon set back.

    3. An important factor for the common situation in which things get worse *at home* at night (rather than while bowling) is that the night-time is typically a time when all kinds of symptoms of all kinds of health conditions seem to get worse. This phenomenon has a lot to do with the general distractions of the day falling away, leaving us more attention capacity to be aware of our bodily symptoms.

    4. Another *at home* issue can come into play when coughs worsen at night - an effect that can sometimes be due to lying flat while in bed making it harder to keep airways clear.

    Barak Gaster, MD answered in Aches, Pains & Illness about 1 year ago | Report
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    A while ago, a doctor informed me that fevers supposedly spike during the night and fall to their lowest point in the early morning. (This was when I was sick as a dog but inexplicably had a slightly higher than normal temperature when I dragged myself to the doctor's office.) If that's true, maybe there's a connection between that and head colds seemingly getting worse at night.

    keshmeshi answered in Aches, Pains & Illness about 1 year ago | Report
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    Maybe because you're worn out from the day? Or if you've taken any medicine for the cold symptoms it could be wearing off by evening. Also, maybe it's all the extra germs that seem to accumulate in bowling alleys.

    new york state of mind answered in Aches, Pains & Illness about 1 year ago | Report
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