Deprived sleepers four times more likely to catch a cold: new study

It’s no secret the lack of sleep can make you sick, but a new study presents the cold hard statistics: people who sleep six hours a night or less are more than four times more likely to catch a cold, compared to those who get more than seven hours of shut-eye a night.

In fact, sleep was the most important factor for catching a cold beyond all others measured in the study like stress, temperament, and alcohol and cigarette use.

“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 and was an overwhelmingly strong predictor for susceptibility to the cold virus,” says Aric Prather, assistant professor of psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco, and lead author of the study published in the journal Sleep.

In Hong Kong, about two in three adults get more than seven hours of sleep a night, according to 2011 statistics from the Centre for Health Protection. This means around a third of Hongkongers are putting themselves at a higher risk for not only colds, but also chronic illnesses, disease susceptibility and even premature death.

Prather's previous studies have shown that people who sleep fewer hours are less protected against illness after receiving a vaccine. Other studies have confirmed that sleep is among the factors that regulate levels of T-cell, which play an important role in the immune system.