What’s With The Body Aches?

Aching bodies can be caused by all sorts of things - injuries, medical conditions, medications, deconditioning, nutrient imbalances, or simply the “good” pain following exercise. Another common “joy” that can bring on body aches are viruses. It is irritating enough to be out sick, but when your muscles and joints join the party it can seem especially rude! So what’s up with the body aches when you have a cold or flu? Well don’t knock your body down too much, like the other unpleasant symptoms that come with being under the weather, body aches can be another sign that your immune system is doing its job and is busy fighting off the viruses that are causing havoc in your system. 

In condensed form, when a foreign invader enters your body, your immune system’s radar scanners soon pick up its presence. They then get busy sending out messages to the rest of the immune system, seeing if any soldiers have ever seen this enemy in the past or not. If we’ve seen it before, chances are better we can mount a very fast attack and be done with it quickly - perhaps even without your knowledge. When it’s been a long time since we’ve been exposed to it or have never seen this particular virus before (or something similar enough), then our immune system has more work to do. It takes a little bit longer to mount the attack as we need to draw up some tactics, build up the defence armies and send them out - and all the while that sneaky virus is multiplying and getting busy playing hide and seek inside our body. Once we’ve got the troops sorted and begin the attack, symptoms abound! This of course includes the regular things: congestion, sore throat, headaches, perhaps GI symptoms, coughing, fever, annnnd body aches. 

When our immune system is busy, some of the immune cells release molecules that can have effects on other cells in our body, these “messengers” are called cytokines. Some cytokines are very strongly associated with inflammation, so increasing them, increases the inflammation in our body and can result in muscle and joint pain. The same type of thing happens when we have an injury. In that case once tissue damage gets detected, the body needs to get all the right cells and materials to the area to help clean up the damage and heal the injury and during this “busy” time we have inflammation. When we increase the inflammation in our body on a more general wide-reaching scale, as is the case with an illness or other systemic process, we have more generalized symptoms and can get that achy feeling throughout the body, especially in the larger muscle groups of the back, upper legs and perhaps shoulder regions. Sometimes the virus itself can hide in or near muscle cells, leading our immune system to have to attack those, causing some direct damage there, in addition to having the higher circulating levels of inflammation. So while the sensation of body aches is anything but pleasant, it is a sign that your body is busy raging war on whatever virus has infected you. 

Another reason that we may get body aches and pains with illness is that our body is needing us to slow down. The link between our immune system and our nervous system is still not well understood, but we do know there is a link and it’s probably more than we realize. It is possible that by doing something like making your back hurt, your nervous system is just helping out by trying to slow you down - in hopes you’ll rest up while the immune system does its thing. More research is needed in this department to comment too much further, but the concept makes good sense as our body would deem having enough resources to fight off an infection as more important than being able to function at optimal physical performance. 

In general, as the intense storm of the “war” between the viruses and our immune cells starts to wind down, so do our symptoms, including the body aches. If you find they do not go away once you start to feel better - or if you’ve been in full attack mode for awhile and nothing is getting better, it’s time to see your doctor for a closer look. If you are sick and develop sudden very severe stiffness in your neck and lose your range of motion, that’s more than is typical for the “body aches” we’re talking about here and should be investigated asap. 

So when you’ve got the typical body aches that accompany a bad cold or the flu, try to take it as good news that your body is doing its job. Keep hydrated to help your system flush out all the junk and paraphernalia that accompanies this little war and try to rest up so your body can spend its energy on fighting that battle rather than also trying to keep your performance levels at top notch.