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You may have heard for years that getting plenty of rest will help you stay healthy. It appears that this is true for the common cold as well as more serious illnesses.

Stephen Cohen, who studies the effects of stress on an individual's health at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, recently led a research study to collect information on the effects of sleep on the common cold.

The study involved a group of 153 volunteers, comprised of both men and women with an age span of 34 years (21 to 55 years old). The study involved recording the sleep habits of the participants for a period of two weeks in order to discover who had slept less than 8 hours, who slept 8 hours or more an what percent of that sleep was restful versus tossing and turning. The participants were then sprayed with a cold virus (rhinovirus), after which they spent five days in a hotel before being checked to see who became ill and who did not.

When the five days were complete, the majority of the participants had become infected with the virus but not all of them developed a cold. The research revealed that those participants who got at least eight hours of uninterrupted sleep each night were less likely to become sick with the common cold. Another interesting discovery was that although getting more sleep helped prevent the common cold, it does little to shorten the length of a cold once you have one.

Clearly, sleeping longer at night helps boost the immune system and protect against the common cold. It is important to also remember that quality is as important (if not more important) than quantity. The key is to feel rested when you wake up in the morning.

What does this mean for those of us that like to burn the candle at both ends? Well, for starters, it looks like we are going to have to slow down a little if we do not want to get sick. That may mean taking the effort to go to bed a little earlier instead of staying up to watch the late night show or finish that last bit of work needed for tomorrow. It also means that we need to make an extra effort to not take our worries to bed with us. If you have ever lay in bed repeatedly running the day's events through your head or ironing out tomorrow's to do list, then you know what I mean.

If you are like me, you may also be thinking that you do not really have the time to get extra sleep; however, if you get sick then you are going to end up with diminished productivity for a couple of weeks at least. When you look at it that way, getting more sleep makes sense.

Learn more about this author, Crystal Bustamante.
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