A new study published in Sleep has reinforced the importance of getting a good night’s sleep. Researchers have demonstrated that not getting enough sleep could increase the risk of catching a cold.
The team reports that people who only get 6 hours sleep a night or less are four times more likely to catch a cold after exposure to the virus than people that get 7 or more hours sleep a night.
“Short sleep was more important than any other factor in predicting subjects’ likelihood of catching cold,” says lead author Aric Prather, assistant professor of Psychiatry at the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF).
“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.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have previously referred to insufficient sleep as a “public health epidemic,” linking it with motor vehicle crashes, industrial disasters and occupational errors.
Poor sleep may be linked to poor metabolic health and could raise the risk of heart attack and stroke.
Less than 5 hours sleep, 4.5 times the risk of catching a cold

2)Naps May Do a Heart Good
Study found they lowered blood pressure in patients, were
linked to better heart and vessel health
Taking a midday nap might
be beneficial for your heart, new
research suggests.
The investigators looked at how an hour-long siesta at noon
affected blood pressure among nearly 400 middle-aged
people with high blood pressure.
The result: those who napped saw their systolic blood
pressure reading (the number on top of the standard blood
pressure ratio) drop an average of 5 percent over the course
of the day, compared with patients who didn’t rest.
More specifically, the team found that nappers saw their
blood pressure readings fall by 4 percent during the day and
by 6 percent while sleeping at night.
“Although the mean BP [blood pressure] decrease seems low,
it has to be mentioned that reductions as small as 2 mmHg
in systolic blood pressure can reduce the risk of
cardiovascular events by up to 10 percent,” study author Dr.
Manolis Kallistrato, a cardiologist at Asklepielon Voula
General Hospital in Athens, said in a European Society of
Cardiology news release.
Kallistrato and his colleagues presented their findings
Saturday at a meeting of the European Society of Cardiology
in London. Research presented at medical meetings is
considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed
journal.
In all, the study involved about 200 men and 186 women,
with an average age of just over 61.
The finding appeared to hold up even after accounting for a
variety of factors that can affect blood pressure, including
smoking history, salt, alcohol and coffee intake, and activity
routines, the researchers said.
Napping was also linked to a reduction in the size of the left
atrium section of the heart, as well as a more than 10
percent drop in so-called “pulse wave velocity” levels. Pulse
wave velocity measures the stiffness of arteries.
“These findings suggest that midday sleepers have less
damage from high blood pressure in their arteries and heart,”
Kallistrato said.
The research can only point to an association, however, and
it does not prove that naps will curb heart disease.
According to Kallistrato, “our study shows that not only is
midday sleep associated with lower blood pressure, but
longer sleeps are even more beneficial… We also found that
hypertensive patients who slept at noon were under fewer
antihypertensive medications compared to those who didn’t
sleep midday.”