Wash Hands, Get Sleep, Prevent a Cold
I have not touched on an actual health issue for a while. So here is a good one.
With the cold and flu season approaching, you should consider how to keep yourself well -- and getting adequate sleep should be high on your priority list.
OK, this is not earth-shattering news, but it is now backed by some published research and is not just a casual recommendation.
I ran into this news in the NYTimes column called Really? which regularly looks at long-held beliefs or old wives tales about health and well-being to see if they hold water. The piece about good sleep preventing colds can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/health/22real.html?ref=health
The actual research was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The study found that adults getting more than 8 hours of sleep a night for two weeks were 3 times less likely to get a cold after being exposed to cold viruses than folks getting less than 7 hours. Also, better quality of sleep was protective. Here is a link to the article's abstract -- http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/169/1/62
Basically, researchers monitored people's sleep for two weeks, then exposed them to rhinovirus, the pesky bug that causes the common cold. They then studied who was more likely to get a cold, and, lo-and-behold, less sleep and lower-quality sleep increased the risk of getting a cold.
So there is my advise to prevent colds: get your sleep, and don't forget to wash your hands.
Now, it's late (yawn), and we all should be hitting the sack (yawn), and preventing colds ... Good night ... Zzzzz...
--Timothy Malia, MD
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