Sleeping less means more colds, researchers warn.

Sleeping less means more colds, researchers warn.

Six hours or less per night means being four times more likely to get sick with the common cold virus, according to research published this week in the journal Sleep.

“Short sleep was more important than any other factor in predicting subjects’ likelihood of catching cold,” said Aric Prather, assistant professor of psychiatry at University of California at San Francisco and lead author. “It didn’t matter how old people were, their stress levels, their race, education of income. It didn’t matter if they were a smoker. With all those things taken into account, statistically, sleep still carried the day.”

The team, which included personnel from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, analyzed 164 volunteers from the Pittsburgh area.

Two months of health screenings, interviews and questionnaires led to the big test: the volunteers were all sequestered in a hotel, administered a cold virus directly via nasal drops. The subjects were monitored for a week afterward, including daily mucus screenings to see if the virus had taken.

Less than five hours of sleep nightly leading up to the virus exposure meant a 4.5 times greater chance of becoming infected than someone who slept seven or more hours of sleep. For those who slept six hours or less, the chances were 4.2 times greater of getting sick, according to the findings.

“It goes beyond feeling groggy or irritable,” Prather added. “Not getting sleep fundamentally affects your physical health.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called insufficient sleep a “public health epidemic” last year amid a series of studies. The federal agency said car crashes, industrial disasters, and other accidents are linked to the lack of rest – but so too are depression, obesity, diabetes, hypertension and even cancer.

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