Sleep a Cold, Feed a Fever

The Archives of Internal Medicine, as reported in USA Today (February 13, 2008), relates that preventing the common cold may be as easy as getting more sleep.

A study took 153 healthy volunteers and locked them up in a hotel room for five days. They were intentionally exposed to a cold virus. Researchers had interviewed the volunteers each day for the previous two weeks, noting what time they went to bed, what time they got up, how much time they spent awake during the night and whether they felt rested in the morning.

The findings show that volunteers who slept less than 7 hours a night were three times more likely to catch a cold than those who regularly slept 8 hours or more or who slept fitfully.