Don't Want to Catch a Cold? Get a Good Night's Sleep
Getting adequate sleep and quality sleep may reduce your risk of catching the common cold. In a new study, researchers recruited 153 healthy men and women, ages 21 to 55, who recorded details about their sleep for two weeks and then were exposed to cold viruses. Those who reported sleeping less than seven hours a night on average were nearly three times more likely to develop a cold than participants getting eight hours or more of nightly shuteye. "Sleep efficiency"-the percentage of time spent in bed actually sleeping rather than tossing and turning-was even more strongly related to risk of the sniffles: Those reporting the least-efficient sleep were 5.5 times more likely to come down with a cold than the most-efficient sleepers.
-Archives of Internal Medicine
