New sleep related research suggests that sleeping 7 hours (at least) at night offers one of the best, most natural ways to keep yourself from getting a cold. Now how’s that for a simple treament for colds?
It’s often been thought that lack of sleep increases your chances of coming down with a cold, but until now there hasn’t been any scientific evidence to back up the claim.
Sleep needs vary greatly from person to person and change dramatically as we get older.
Newborns, though sleep deprived parents might disagree, sleep an average of 16 to 18 hours a day (just unfortunately not all at once!), preschoolers between 10 to 12 hours a night.
School-aged children and teens need 9 (or more) hours of sleep a night.
By the time we reach adulthood our sleep needs have fallen to 7 to 8 hours, and continue to decrease as we age.
The research appears in a January 2009 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, and finds that those who sleep less than 7 hours a night are three times more likely to catch a cold as those who sleep at least 8 (or more) hours a night.
The study involved 153 healthy subjects, aged 21-55, with each participant keeping track of their sleeping habits for two weeks.
The men and women also wrote down how well they slept, if they felt rested, and the length of time they’d slept. Average scores were calculated for the testing period.
At the end of the 14 days, the subjects were quarantined, exposed to the most common cold causing virus and monitored for five days for signs of a cold.
What turned out to be most predictive of the cold was the amount of sleep the subjects got at night. Subjects who spent 92% of their time in bed asleep were five times more likely to get the cold than those who spent 98% of their time in bed asleep.
Surprisingly, the feeling of being rested wasn’t a factor in whether the subjects ended up with the cold, and this suggests to the research team that sleep may indeed play a causal role in how susceptible you are to a cold. Poorer sleep, and shorter sleep periods seem to lower resistance to this all too common illness.
What’s more, deprive yourself of sleep and you’ll suffer in terms of:
- Performance – sleep helps you think clearly, react quickly and create memory pathways in the brain needed for learning and remembering. Research bears this out.
- Mood – sleep helps you keep irritability and depression in check, for young kids and teens lack of sleep makes mood control all the harder.
- Health - lack of regular sleep ups your risk of having high blood pressure, heart disease and other medical conditions. Plus, during sleep the body produces valuable hormones that are needed to help in growth, energy use and fighting infections.
Another important factor in determining your own particular sleep pattern is your “biological clock”, a bundle of brain cells that respond to light from the eyes and help you wake up.
This clock causes us to naturally feel drowsy from midnight to 7:00 am, and again in the mid afternoon between 1:00 and 4:00 pm.
To help yourself get the best, most restorative sleep possible, you should eat a healthy, balanced diet, get regular exercise and practice good sleep habits. By doing all you can to ensure your body gets the rest it needs, you’ll amaze yourself (and everyone you know) by how few colds you end up getting.
Continues below…
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A Good Night’s Sleep Might Just Prevent That Cold… continued
Tips for getting a good nights sleep:
- Go to bed and get up at a regular bedtime every day, even on weekends or when you’re on vacation. This helps to regulate your internal body clock and educate it when it should be sleeping and when it needs to be awake.
- Avoid caffeine, nicotine, chocolate, sugar and alcohol as much as possible, especially in the hours leading up to bedtime.
- Resist the temptation, no matter how tired you are, to take long naps during the day. Having a rest or a 10 minute ‘power’ nap is ok, but make sure you don’t oversleep.
- Don’t eat large meals in the 3 hours before your established bedtime, and try to limit your fluids from late afternoon to avoid nighttime trips to the bathroom if this is an issue for you.
- Don’t watch the news, or engage in any stimulating or stressful activity within an hour of your bedtime.
- Use relaxation techniques like deep breathing, progressive relaxation or guided imagery to quiet your mind.
- Wind down with a warm shower or bath, or with a warm, non-caffeinated beverage while listening to relaxing music.So, if you’re in danger of catching a the bug, rember this simple treatment for colds and make sure that you’re getting enough sleep.
