Can You Skydive With A Cold?
Skydiving
Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
Skydiving with a cold isn’t recommended, as congestion combined with pressure changes can lead to ear pain, dizziness, or even injury. Being sick also increases your risk of dehydration and can slow down your recovery after the jump. Mild, manageable allergy symptoms may be okay, but significant congestion or feeling run-down is a sign to sit it out. When in doubt, listen to your body and reschedule – skydiving is way more fun when you’re feeling 100%.
Many people worry about getting sick while skydiving (which is a rarity!) but often fail to think about jumping if you’re already feeling down for the count. Can you skydive with a cold? Well … you can, but it isn’t advisable.
Skydiving with a cold may help to blast all the gunk out of your sinuses, but it could also leave all your ear tubes in turmoil. Plus, who wants to jump from an airplane when feeling like you just want to curl up on the couch? If you’re Googling, “Can I go skydiving when I’m sick?” Here’s the skinny: skydiving while sick is just not it. Here’s why!
Risks Of Skydiving While Sick
Dehydration
Skydiving is demanding … and so is fighting sickness! High-adrenaline activities like skydiving put stress on the body and call for extra hydration. Combining this need with the increase in hydration needed when fighting a sickness is no bueno. Becoming dehydrated can leave you feeling woozy, amplify a headache, and even cause disorientation, which are all things you don’t want during a skydiving experience.
Ear Damage
It’s common for a cold to bring some ickiness in your eustachian tubes – these are the little passageways that connect your middle ear to the back of your nose. When we climb in an airplane, the air pressure slowly decreases as the altitude increases. Similarly, when we soar through freefall and fly back to earth under the parachute (i.e. decrease our altitude), the air pressure increases.
These changes in pressure demand that your eustachian tubes clear themselves – this is why you may see people pinching their noses, keeping their mouths closed and ‘blowing’ while on the ride up the altitude and under the canopy. When we’re sick and congested, these tubes can have trouble clearing, which can lead to some gnarly pain, dizziness, and even a ruptured eardrum!
So, is flying with a stuffy nose bad? It may not be the most comfortable thing ever (depending on how stopped up you are), but there is a major difference between commercial planes and jump planes: pressurization! Jump planes are not pressurized, which can make the air pressure change feel more drastic. Plus, skydiving entails dealing with the elements of freefall, while commercial flying does not. That being said, flying with congestion may not be the move …
Sinus Barotrauma
Sinus barotrauma is an injury to the sinus cavities that occurs when the pressure inside of you doesn’t match what’s going on outside. It is known to happen during SCUBA diving, air travel, and other rapid forms of pressure change – like driving down a mountain quickly.
Although our sinuses are beautifully designed to be able to handle these types of external changes, pressure equalization can fail when our sinuses are already out of whack, like if we have a cold! Sinus barotrauma basically forms a vacuum in your sinus cavity – ouch! Results of this include headaches, facial pain, and even nosebleeds.
Many people wonder, “Can I go diving if I have a cold?” And similar to skydiving, SCUBA demands some serious pressure changes, which aren’t conducive for a fun time when you’re feeling under the weather.
Longer Recovery
Although it’s annoying, being sick is a huge signal from our bodies to slow the heck down. Sickness means our immune systems are working in overdrive and they need all the rest they can get! Although awesome, hurling your body from an airplane and enduring terminal velocity freefall is not what your body needs when fighting a cold.
Can I Skydive With A Blocked Nose?
Many people struggle with seasonal allergies and the random stuffy nose – should these prevent you from taking the leap? Not necessarily. If you feel your symptoms are manageable and not contagious (hint hint!) then you’re most likely good to jump. If you catch yourself complaining about how you feel and thinking, “Ugh, my sinuses are so clogged up right now,” then skydiving may need to wait for now.
Ultimately, you know your body better than anyone! Remember what we said above about bursting our ear drums? That is more likely to happen with congestion, so we’d suggest sitting this one out if you have any hesitation!
What if your nose is good … can you skydive if you have a cough? We mean, sure, but that wouldn’t be the courteous thing to do! Skydiving entails sitting in a tightly packed airplane for a bit and being all up in your instructor’s grill.
Our rule of thumb is if you’re feeling anything less than 100%, skydiving can wait!
Can I Reschedule If I’m Sick?
Yes – and we would prefer you do! Skydiving is a close-quarters activity, and as much as we would love to get to know you, we don’t need to become acquainted with your germs. It is free to reschedule with us, and even free to cancel, we do reserve a right to charge $50 in the event that you’re a no-show. Just give us a call before your scheduled time!
Feeling tip top and ready to book your jump? Let’s go!! Have questions? Reach out! We can’t wait to share the sky with you!
