Research
Adherence
Short sleep duration (less than 6 hours per night) measured objectively via actigraphy significantly increases susceptibility to developing a clinical common cold following viral exposure.
To lower your risk of catching a cold, prioritize getting more than 7 hours of sleep per night. This study shows that sleeping less than 6 hours significantly increases your odds of getting sick after exposure to the virus. Focus on total duration rather than just sleep quality or fragmentation.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Logistic regression analysis revealed that actigraphy-assessed shorter sleep duration was associated with an increased likelihood of development of a clinical cold. Specifically, those sleeping < 5 h (odds ratio [OR] = 4.50, 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.08–18.69) or sleeping between 5 to 6 h (OR = 4.24, 95% CI, 1.08–16.71) were at greater risk of developing the cold compared to those sleeping > 7 h per night
Why this rating
High-quality experimental design (viral challenge) with objective behavioral measurement (actigraphy), though limited to healthy adults.
Source
Behaviorally Assessed Sleep and Susceptibility to the Common Cold
Aric A. Prather et al. · SLEEP · 2015
DOI 10.5665/sleep.4968
rct · n=164Cited 397×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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