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Does sleeping fewer hours than needed cause the common cold? If so, how?

Konrad Rudolph
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rahul
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    The question can be interpreted ambiguously: 1) literal meaning, sleep deprivation causes common cold, or 2) sleep deprivation causes "common cold"-like symptoms. (1) has been answered with weakened immune system and virus, though it'd be interesting to see if someone can explore on case (2), moreover if it's not caused by external source. – Andrew T. Oct 28 '19 at 02:57
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    Technically speaking, no. Common cold is caused by a virus. Practically speaking, as the answers show, lack of sleep makes you more vulnerable to any virus. – Gloweye Oct 28 '19 at 11:14
  • Generally the answer to “does X cause cold” is “no, unless X is rhinovirus”. In particular, cold doesn't cause cold... – leftaroundabout Oct 28 '19 at 12:06

2 Answers2

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There have been some studies directly linking sleep deprivation to increased risk of catching a cold ("Behaviorally Assessed Sleep and Susceptibility to the Common Cold Sleep". 2015;38:1353–9.).

Colds are caused by a family of viruses. There is pretty solid evidence that sleep deprivation has a significant weakening effect on your immune system. Given a weakened immune system, it would be more likely that you would catch a cold if you are exposed to one of the cold-causing viruses.

Charles E. Grant
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    Though it would be not just colds, but any infectious disease. – jamesqf Oct 25 '19 at 16:44
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    @jamessqf Sure, but that wasn't the question. The first reference looks specifically at the common cold, the second reference looks at the general issue of weakened immune system. – Charles E. Grant Oct 25 '19 at 17:35
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    It's a matter of correctness, I think. If the question is simply whether sleep deprivation causes colds, then the answer is no. Rhinoviruses cause colds. – jamesqf Oct 26 '19 at 03:42
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    @jamesqf And next time a rabid dog bite does not cause rabies, the virus does? – Vladimir F Героям слава Oct 27 '19 at 07:53
  • It is a similar thing as with https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/5445/why-does-the-cold-make-us-sick?r=SearchResults Even a small child knows that a virus causes the disease. The point is whether cold temperature of nose and throat or sleep deprivation do or do not open the way for the virus to overcome the immunity becase in a typical city in the right season there is no lack of the virus. Just saying - not a disease is caused by a virus so everything else must be a myth is just wrong. One should adk, would I be sick if I didn't get cold or if I slept more? – Vladimir F Героям слава Oct 27 '19 at 08:07
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    @jamesqf What actual point are you trying to make? The answer explicitly says "Colds are caused by a family of viruses" and refers to "cold-causing viruses". It explicitly says that lack of sleep weakens the immune system and that this makes it more likely to catch a cold. OK, it doesn't explicitly say that a weakened immune system also makes it more likely that you'll catch any other infectious disease, but isn't it obvious enough that it doesn't need to be said? Are you just upset that the answer doesn't include the one-word summary, "no"? – David Richerby Oct 27 '19 at 09:02
  • @Vladimir F: You might get rabies from a dog bite, but you are (in the US) much more likely to get it from raccoons, bats, and other wild animals: https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/exposure/animals/index.html Conversely, only a miniscule fraction of people bitten by dogs get rabies, because almost all dogs are given rabies vaccines. So dog bites do not cause rabies, getting bitten by any mammal with the disease does. Likewise, lack of sleep does not CAUSE colds, it may weaken the immune system and make you more susceptible to infection by ANY virus - perhaps even rabies. – jamesqf Oct 27 '19 at 16:23
  • I think everyone agrees that "causes the cold" is imprecise language, and "causes increased chance of catching a cold" is a more precise but also pedantic way to say it. There's no point in arguing semantics any further. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Oct 27 '19 at 18:38
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    @jamesqf: We can use Aristotle's causes here. The Rhino virus is the material cause; sleep deprivation is the formal cause. In general, many things happen for a combination of causes. – MSalters Oct 28 '19 at 14:32
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    @jamesqf If you want to be super semantic about it, the entire set of spacetime within the OP's past Cauchy horizon caused his cold. – Bridgeburners Oct 28 '19 at 17:18
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A new study published in this week's journal SLEEP finds that people who sleep less than six hours are more likely to catch a cold. Researchers tracked 164 healthy men and women for a week at a time, monitoring how much they slept and exposing them to the rhinovirus, also known as, the common cold.

Aric Prather, lead author of the study, and his colleagues found that those who slept less than five hours were 4.5 times more likely to have a cold than those who slept seven hours.

Only 18% of those who slept six or more hours got a cold, while 39% of those who slept less than six hours got the virus. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, most adults average two to three colds a year and kids have even more. Prather pointed out that when we don't sleep enough, it may impact our immune systems in a variety of ways -- from how the cells act to enabling our inflammation pathways.

Sonia Lee
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  • I take it the baseline for control was around 13% had a cold? – Tim Oct 28 '19 at 11:37
  • How has the cold virus survived for so long? Is it able to lie dormant within a host until their immune system is weaker than normal? More people seem to get a cold in the winter. – Paul McCarthy Oct 28 '19 at 13:55
  • @PaulMcCarthy Generally diseases likes colds survive by circling through large populations, and mutating quickly enough that you don't have much resistance to it by the time it comes back around to you. – azurefrog Oct 28 '19 at 22:23
  • @azurefrog Yes but more people appear to get a cold in Winter. If the virus was just circulating, roughly the same numbers of people would have a cold all year round. – Paul McCarthy Oct 29 '19 at 11:30