My Family Doctor
A family practitioner for over 25 years, Dr. Hubbard knows the medical world inside and out. Frustrated by managed care and the lack of time doctors were able to spend educating patients, he launched James Hubbard's My Family Doctor: The Magazine That Makes Housecalls, a national magazine written by health care practitioners that is his answer to hurried doctor visits, conflicting medical studies, and complicated treatment options.
Good Sleep Boosts Immunity, Prevents Common Cold
Do you get enough quality sleep?
The real question about one recent study may be, did these “volunteers” undergo torture as defined by the Geneva Convention?
Past studies have shown that poor sleep habits weaken your body’s natural immune function. A recent study in the Archives of Internal Medicine gets more specific. In it, researchers directly exposed volunteers to a cold virus to see if sleep made a difference in fighting it off.
In an experiment that I thought only medical students would volunteer to undergo, the participants were quarantined for five days. They got drops with a high concentration of rhinovirus up their nose and waited for the consequences.
No animals were harmed in this study.
Before the quarantine, these people reported their sleep patterns each day for two weeks. The investigators were interested in sleep duration and sleep efficiency (how long they reported sleeping divided by how long they were in bed. Less than 85% is considered abnormal.
Results
- There was a pattern. The longer and better quality the sleep, the less susceptibility to colds.
- People getting less than seven hours of sleep nightly were almost three times more likely to get a cold.
- People with less than a 92% efficiency were over five times more likely to get a cold than those with a 98% efficiency or above.
Bottom line
- Get your eight hours or more of sleep.
- Use good sleep hygiene to get quality sleep.
- Don’t forget your children and teens.
The researchers mercifully excluded people with heart disease, asthma, and sleep apnea. They took multiple variables, including smoking and exercise, into consideration in the analysis.
Do you get enough sleep? What are your sleep habits?
By James Hubbard, MD, MPH
My Family Doctor Blog
[Originally posted January 13, 2009, James Hubbard’s My Family Doctor Web site.]
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