“…Many components of the immune system exhibit change after heavy exertion, including the following [53,77]: -Neutrophilia (high blood neutrophil counts) and lymphopenia (low blood lymphocyte counts), induced by high plasma catecholamines, growth hormone, and cortisol [5,13,22,29,33,53,71,97,103]. -Increase in blood granulocyte and monocyte phagocytosis and activation markers (reflecting an inflammatory response due to substances released from injured muscle cells), but a decrease in nasal neutrophil phagocytosis [3,9,18,42,74,83].…”