Get plenty of sleep to avoid colds

Similar to what your grandmother may have said, getting plenty of sleep may prevent one from getting a cold.

Healthy adults were paid $800 each from researchers to have cold viruses sprayed in their noses. They then waited five days in a hotel while they waited to see if they would get sick. Sleepers that were used to getting eight-hours of sleep at night were shown to be less prone to get sick than those who got less than seven hours or who didn’t sleep well.

Lead author Sheldon Cohen, who studies the health effects of stress at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University, says that the more sleep you get, the better and the less prone you are to get colds.

Past research has indicated that sleep improves immunity at the cell level. This new research is the first to reveal little interruptions raise the threat of getting sick, according to Dr. Michael Irwin, who studies immune response at the University of California, Los Angeles but was not connected with the study.

This study, featured in the Archives of Internal Medicine, exposed test subjects to the rhinovirus, which is a common cold virus. It was found that people in the study that slept less than several hours a night during the weeks prior to being exposed were three times more prone to getting a cold than those who slept for eight or more hours.

In the study, 78 men and 75 women who were of ages 21 to 55 were chosen by researchers. For two weeks, they kept specific tabs on them. Then they moved the participants to a hotel where they ejected the virus into their noses. Five days later, the virus had infected 135 out of the 153 people in the study. This said, only 54 became sick.

It was found that not sleeping well was connected to making the participants more at risk for getting a cold. Those who slept spasmodically more than 8 percent of the time were five times more prone to get sick than those who were not sleeping 2 percent of the time. 

Unexpectedly, feeling rested was not connected to staying healthy.