Lack of sleep linked to colds
Tuesday, 13 Jan 2009 00:32
Less than seven hours of sleep a night increases your chances of catching a cold
Health In Focus
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A study has shown getting less than seven hours of sleep a night increases your chances of catching a cold.
According to experts those people who get less than seven hours of sleep appear to be about three times more likely to develop respiratory illness following exposure to a cold virus as those who sleep eight hours or more.
Today's report in the Archives of Internal Medicine looked at 154 men and women between 2000 and 2004. The participants were interviewed daily over a two-week period, reporting how many hours they slept, what percentage of their time in bed was spent asleep and whether they felt rested.
The volunteers were then quarantined and administered nasal drops containing the common-cold–causing rhinovirus. For five days afterward, the study participants reported any signs and symptoms of illness and had mucus samples collected from their nasal passages for virus cultures; about 28 days later, they submitted a blood sample that was tested for antibody responses to the virus.
The research found the less an individual slept, the more likely they were to develop a cold. Lower sleep efficiency was also associated with becoming ill – participants who spent less than 92 per cent of their time in bed asleep were five and a half times more likely to become ill than those whose efficiency was 98 per cent or higher. Feeling rested was not associated with colds.
"What mechanisms might link sleep to cold susceptibility? When the components of clinical illness (infection and signs or symptoms) were examined separately, sleep efficiency but not sleep duration was associated with signs and symptoms of illness. However, neither was associated with infection," the authors write.
"A possible explanation for this finding is that sleep disturbance influences the regulation of pro-inflammatory cytokines, histamines and other symptom mediators that are released in response to infection."
In conclusion they suggest that everyone should aim to get around seven to eight hours sleep a night.