Meditate Your Cold Away

Ah– Ah– Achoo! It’s that time of year again. Colds are one of life’s most consistent disruptions. They seem to have perfect timing too, arriving just in time for holiday travel, visitors, and important work projects. Worst of all, there’s no cure for those sniffles and sneezes. We just have to tough it out, relying on our favorite remedies, like chicken noodle soup and Vicks VapoRub.

However, if you meditate regularly, you might just have an advantage.

Two clinical trials out of the University of Wisconsin, put the question “Can meditation help with the common cold?” to the test. These studies explored whether mindfulness meditation could reduce the frequency, duration, or severity of acute respiratory infections (ARIs), such as the common cold. They compared meditation against exercise and against no intervention.

The results aren’t magic, but they are meaningful. For anyone who practices meditation for wellbeing, or is simply curious about mind–body health, these findings offer a grounded, evidence-based understanding of meditation and the common cold.

Meditation And The Common Cold

The first study was aptly named the “Meditation or Exercise for Preventing Acute Respiratory Infection” (MEPARI) trial. It followed adults aged 50 and older through a single cold-and-flu season, after randomizing them to mindfulness practice, a moderate-exercise program, or a control group. Both the exercise and meditation group were expected to take part in a 2.5 hour class per week (about 20-45 minutes per day) for 8 weeks. 

All participants were monitored closely and documented symptoms daily using a validated cold-severity tool.

The outcomes were striking:

• Meditation practitioners had 27 episodes of acute respiratory infection, compared with 40 in the control group.
  
• Total days of illness were nearly cut in half: 257 days for the meditation group vs 453 days for controls.
  
• Global illness severity — an overall measure of how bad symptoms felt over time — was 144 for meditators compared with 358 for controls, a clinically meaningful difference.
  
• Meditation also led to fewer missed workdays (only 16 respiratory infection-related days compared with 67 in the control group), hinting that the benefits may translate into real-world functionality.

Meditation and exercise reduced colds compared to controls, but meditation showed the strongest reductions. Meditation also had slightly better outcomes for overall illness severity and missed workdays than exercise.

What does this mean for people interested in meditation and the common cold? The trial suggests that mindfulness practice may reduce the burden of colds, not just how often they occur. 

While no single practice can “prevent” colds outright, meditation appears to meaningfully shift the experience of getting sick.

A Confirmatory Study Yields More Modest Results

A second, larger study (over 400 adults, ages 30–69) aimed to replicate and expand upon the initial findings. Participants again received either mindfulness training, exercise training, or no intervention, and were followed throughout an entire cold season. The design and measures were nearly identical, allowing researchers to build on the earlier results .

This time the effects were more modest but still consistent:

• The meditation group experienced 112 respiratory infection episodes, compared with 134 in the control group.
  
• Total days of illness were 1045 for meditators vs 1210 for controls.
  
• Mean global severity scores were lower in the meditation group (315) than the control group (336).

When combined with the original MEPARI trial, the researchers reported a pooled reduction of roughly 20–33% in illness burden for meditation, depending on the metric. Importantly, these effects were similar in magnitude to those seen with many accepted public-health interventions, such as flu shots.

Another interesting finding: meditation practitioners consistently showed improvements in mental health, stress reduction, sleep, and self-efficacy. These changes, which were documented repeatedly on validated psychological measures, may help explain why meditation practitioners fared better when colds did strike.

Together, these studies suggest that mindfulness doesn’t eliminate colds but appears to soften their impact. The evidence points toward a gentle but real protective effect.

 Meditation and the Immune System

Zooming out from these individual studies, how might meditation influence the immune system more generally? A growing body of research, which we’ve previously covered on our blog, suggests that meditation meaningfully affects the stress response, inflammation, and immune-related signaling.

Here’s what scientists believe may be happening:

1. Stress reduction supports immune balance

Chronic stress is well-documented to suppress aspects of immune function and increase susceptibility to respiratory infections. Meditation helps regulate the stress response, reducing the hormonal cascades that can make you more vulnerable to viruses.

2. Meditation may influence inflammatory markers

In both MEPARI trials, inflammatory molecules increased during illness, as expected, but some shifts differed slightly between groups, suggesting that long-term meditation practitioners may mount or resolve inflammatory responses differently.

3. Better sleep, better immunity

Both trials found improved sleep quality in meditation and exercise groups. Sleep is one of the most powerful modulators of immune health, affecting everything from antibody production to the activity of natural killer cells.

4. A calmer mind may create a more resilient body

Meditation can support rest-and-repair physiology. Over time, this may help the body respond more efficiently when confronted with viruses.

The immune system is complex, and meditation isn’t a cure, but it appears to be one accessible, low-risk way to support your overall resilience during cold season. And if you do catch a cold, the research suggests you may experience a shorter, milder illness.

Meditation might not stop the sniffles, but it may just help you breathe a little easier through them.

A note on our sources:

Still Sitting is committed to writing and researching articles that are accurate and informative. We know there are many places to find information online. So, we work hard to ensure that we are a trusted source for all of our readers. This blog is intended to help you learn about our products and the cultural subjects that we hold dear. As part of this commitment, we include the sources we use to write our posts:

Meta-analysis of mindfulness and immunity biomarkers
The Original MEPARI Trial
Improved function and quality of life in the MEPARI Trial

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