Enough Sleep Reduces the Risk of Catching a Cold

A recent clinical trial showed that a good night's sleep can significantly reduce the risk of getting sick with a cold. The study was carried out by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Its results have been published in the journal Sleep.

Researchers examined the sleeping habits of 164 healthy adults. The volunteers' sleep durations and efficiency were recorded for 14 days. Participants also self-reported whether they felt tired or rested at the end of the period. After exposure to live rhinovirus, volunteers were monitored to see if they developed a cold. The results indicated that people who slept less than six hours a night had a four-fold increase in the risk of catching a cold. The risk increased to 4.5 times for those who slept five to six hours and nearly three times for those who slept seven or more.

The National Institutes of Health, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health supported the study's findings. It was conducted with the help of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Carnegie Mellon University.

The study found that a week-long baseline of sleep behavior can predict cold susceptibility. It's important to note that sleep efficiency was a stronger overall predictor of illness than sleep duration. The efficiency of sleep is defined as the percentage of time spent asleep, from lying down to waking up.

In addition, the study found that insufficient sleep is a significant risk factor for developing chronic diseases. Sleep deprivation can be linked to a higher risk of developing cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and other ailments. The United States has a significant problem with insufficient sleep. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control has declared that inadequate sleep is a public health epidemic. The CDC advises that people get at least seven hours of sleep a night.

Researchers have long believed that sleep is critical to maintaining good health. Insufficient sleep is associated with a high risk of medical errors, premature death, and car crashes. While it's impossible to know precisely why sleep plays a role in health, scientists have studied the relationship between sleep and immunity for decades. In the future, research will focus on specific aspects of immune system function that are tied to sleep.

The study's authors

Say that they're excited by the findings. "Sleep is an important pillar in public health and should be treated as such," said Aric Prather, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and the study's lead author. The National Institutes of Health and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute financed the study.

Prather said the study was a better way of assessing the risks of chronic sleep loss than the typical experiment. The researchers had to consider factors that could interfere with the experiment's outcome, including confounding variables such as socioeconomic status and the season of the year. The study had to be prospective, which meant it could not make causal inferences. However, the study's design provides reliable measures of sleep over a 14-day period. This allows researchers to compare the relative importance of sleep duration, sleep efficiency, and feeling rested.

So. Sleep Reduces the Risk of Catching a Cold,