Question: What is the worst that can happen to a lung from a cold?

Natt Day answered on 17 Jun 2015:

Hi AJ,

Typically colds don’t really damage the lungs long-term as our lung cells are brilliant at regenerating (typically we will have enough lung cell regeneration to amount to us having 65 brand new pairs of lungs over our lifetime). During the cold we do see a higher level of cell death and these cells ‘shed’ off which means cells underneath that shouldn’t be exposed end up becoming more vulnerable to other particles (such as tiny metal particles) we may breathe in which can cause more long term lung damage.

It’s also been shown that sometimes the cold can also lead to development of more severe lung diseases like bronchitis, pneumonia and can lead to hospitalisation. So it can be fairly nasty!

Natt