A new study shows that sleeping for longer hours will more likely prevent a person from having colds.
A research led by the University of California, San Francisco suggests that those who sleep six hours or less every night are four times more vulnerable to colds than those people who have their good night sleep for more than six hours.
Prof. Aric Prather, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco stated the importance of long sleeping hours.
"Short sleep was more important than any other factor in predicting subjects' likelihood of catching cold," he said.
"It didn't matter how old people were, their stress levels, their race, education or income. It didn't matter if they were a smoker. With all those things taken into account, statistically sleep still carried the day," Prather added.
The objective of the study was to connect the people's natural sleeping habits and the risk of getting sick especially colds. The said study was conducted by recruiting 164 healthy participants from the Pittsburgh area between 2007 and 2011. They first undergo series of health screenings and interviews for almost two months. This is to set up the baselines for factors like stress, temperament, and the alcohol and cigarette use.
After that, the participants' normal sleeping habits were measured using a wrist actigraph. This device will measure the number of hours a person sleeps at night for 1 week. The subjects are then sequestered in hotel where they are dosed with rhinovirus, a viral infectious agents that causes cold to humans.
The result showed that those who slept five hours or less are 4.5 times more vulnerable to colds than people who slept seven hours or more. Also, those who rested for six hours a night were found 4.2 times more likely to catch a cold than those participants who slept for 7 hours or more.
According to the researchers, the results shows that sleep is one of the most important pillar of public health in addition to exercise and good diet.
