Search icon

Health

13th Sep 2015

Not Getting Enough Sleep Can Have a Major Impact on Your Health

A survey found that people who sleep less are more likely to get sick

Rebecca McKnight

Not getting enough sleep can have a major impact on your health, according to a recent survey.

The study found that people who sleep less than six hours a night are 4.2 times more like to catch the cold than those who get seven hours.

sinus cold

Researchers at The University of California – San Francisco screened people’s sleeping habits for two months.

The subjects were given a sample of the common cold via nasal drops and experts then took mucus samples to see who caught it.

Side profile of a young woman sleeping on a bed

Speaking about the findings Aric Prather, PhD, assistant professor of Psychiatry at UCSF, said: “Short sleep was more important than any other factor in predicting subjects’ likelihood of catching cold.”

This doesn’t bode well for the 64 per cent of Irish people who don’t think they are getting the sleep they need.