That Happened!

Seattle - Sure, you feel refreshed after a nice, long night of sleep, and people have intuitively known about the benefits of sleep for centuries. Now, however, there is some hard science to back up the intuitions of many — sleep keeps you healthy.

A study by Carnegie Mellon University recently gathered about 150 healthy men and women and categorized them by their sleep patterns. The researchers then infected all of these healthy individuals with the common cold virus and locked them in a hotel for five days. Throughout these five days, the researchers analyzed these men and women for symptoms of the common cold, and the hypothesis that sleep staves away the cold proved true: people who slept fewer than seven hours a night were about three times more likely to get the cold.

Why is this the case? The researchers had a hypothesis about this, as well: getting a restless night of sleep can disturb the immune system in ways that make you more susceptible to the common cold. According to Professor Ron Eccles, director of the Common Cold Centre at the University of Cardiff: “The immune system may control the sleep-wake pattern and lack of sleep or sleep disturbance may depress the immune response to infection.”

It is clear, now, that although it is unproven whether “early to bed and early to rise” will make you wealthy and wise, it will at least make you healthy — Ben Franklin would be pleased.