It turns out that the human body has natural immunizing powers that work particularly well when people are affording themselves at least seven hours of sleep a night. The researchers tested this hypothesis by monitoring subjects and their sleep patterns in order to define their control groups. The subjects wore sleep trackers for a week to establish baseline patterns, and then after that week the scientists sprayed live cultures of the cold virus directly into the nostrils of the participants.
While of course some of the participants were infected, there was a distinct pattern amongst the subjects. People who logged fewer than seven hours of sleep per night became sick four times more often than the people who slept for at least seven hours a night. Going further, the numbers at fewer than six hours were actually pretty staggering: 39 percent of subjects who averaged less than six hours of sleep became infected.
Because the study was more focused on the sleep patterns and the outcomes of different sleep variables, there was no exact explanation provided for the physiology of why the participants who got more sleep became sick less often. However, a previous study that measured the affects of fatigue in respect to the chances of becoming infected corroborated the results. The correlation being, if you get more sleep, you will be less fatigued - and fatigue weakens the body's immune system.
Certainly other factors beyond hours of sleep will play a role in whether or not people will become infected, but if you want to at least improve your chances of not getting sick this fall and winter: get some sleep!
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