Sleeping little increases the risk of catching a cold
The sleeping benefits With a restful sleep they are widely known by all. In this line, a new study ensures that sleeping six or less hours at night increases the risk of catching a cold compared to those who spend seven or more hours of sleep. A new news that comes to give more reasons for us to take seriously the need to sleep and do well.
The study, published in the journal 'Sleep', insists on the idea that lack of sleep weakens the immune system and favors infection by the common cold virus. "A brief dream plays a more important role in the risk of catching a cold than any other factor," says the researcher at the University of California (San Francisco, United States) and principal author of the work, Aric Prather.
The importance of sleep
According to the results achieved in your work, age, level of stress, level of education, income or even tobacco seem to be less important that the sleep level: "considering all these factors, statistically, sleep habits are more determinant," says the text, according to Scientific American, which has echoed the work.
Vulnerability due to lack of sleep
To reach these conclusions, the researchers evaluated the health status of a total of 164 volunteers aged between 18 and 55 for two months. Through medical examinations, interviews and questionnaires, doctors controlled factors such as Stress, personality and the consumption of alcohol and tobacco.
In addition, the work also included a study on the sleep routine of each of the volunteers a week before administering the cold virus through nasal drops. Thus, every day they were collecting mucus samples from the nose of these volunteers in order to check if the virus had affected them and to what extent.
With these explorations, the researchers discoveredn those volunteers who had slept less than six hours during the night were 4.2 times more likely to have a cold common compared to those who had rested more than seven hours.
In addition, participants who had rested for less than five hours showed even more vulnerability: 4.5 times more likely to catch a cold than their peers who slept seven hours or more.
For the authors, all this goes to show that the shortage of hours of sleep influences the immune system of people, even when they are not aware of this rest deficit. "Not getting enough sleep goes beyond causing grogginess or irritability, fundamentally affecting physical health," concludes Prather.
Angela R. Bonachera
