kateswimmer

I want to start swimming regularly but I find that after swimming I have a sore throat and runny nose. I assume this is a reaction to the chlorine in the water. Does anyone have any remedies? I've thought of taking a water bottle to the poolside and taking an antacid before swimming so that the back of my throat is a less acid environment.

Am I the only person who suffers this problem?

texasaggoes

The runny nose is pretty common. The sore throat could be caused by you snorting up the snot instead of blowing it out.

Also, are you getting a lot of water up your nose? That would be the most likely explanation for the throat pain.

BeachBum25

Agreed... it's most likely an irritation caused by the chlorine in the pool. How fast/hard are you swimming? Are you getting your heart rate up and thus, your breathing rate? It's probably just me, but I tend to get a sore throat from strenuous cardio workouts that make me breathe hard & fast. I live to CO so I'm guessing it has something to do with the dry air.

I'm just thinking that in your case it might be a combination of breathing harder/faster/deeper that you normally do combined with an influx of chlorinated water hitting the back of your throat. Something you might try to work on is rotating your hips more, so your mouth is further out of the water when you take your breath. This may/may not help minimize the amount of water splashing in and around your mouth & lungs. Just a thought.

MaartenB, Belgian Coach

Have you guys ever stopped to think what all that chlorine actually does to us? It really does some longterm damage...

I heard a few years ago that people were looking into safer options. But I haven't looked into it myself after that.

Does anybody know of a different approach? Except salt-water...

iluvpandas888

Yesterday, I went swimming for an hour and a half to two hours. About two hour after I got out, my throat startrd to hurt. I have a long history of strep throat, but it wasn't excactly the same symptons. I took some medicene which made the pain go away, but gave me a headache. I also had a strange dream that was blurry. I woke up about every two hours and just had the strange, blurry dream. When I woke up, my balence wasn't very good. Was the sore throat from the cholrene? I want to know is I should go swimming again today. Please reply.

texasaggies

You're probably ok. Unless your pool has a poor ventilation system, I wouldn't think those symptoms would be from the chlorine. May be something else wrong with you. I would check it out with a doctor if you're really worried about it.

And to Maarten-I know there's some work being done with special UV filters that blast the bad stuff away, but they're not perfect yet. May be the way of the future though.