Cold symptoms will go away on their own over time and rest is one of the best ways to help your body heal, so in a sense, you can sleep without a cold. Sleep helps boost your immune system and can help you recover from a cold more quickly. You really need more sleep when you don't feel well because of a cold or the flu, Taneja-Uppal says. This is especially true if you have a low-grade fever, which can occur with colds, or the higher fever that accompanies the flu.
Sleep helps your body fight the infection that makes you feel sick. It may seem cliché to remind yourself to get enough rest, but you should if you want to recover quickly and help your treatment do its job. But, don't just think that you're resting because you're relaxing. Real sleep is key, as it will help your body recover faster and fight infections.
This is your free pass to take several naps in addition to having a few early nights. If you need a helping hand, you should try. The results showed that those who slept an average of less than seven hours a night were almost three times more likely to develop a common cold than those who reported eight or more hours a night in the weeks leading up to the experiment. Vyas reminds us that it's important to make sure you're up to date with your shots once you've overcome your cold.
After 14 days, participants were quarantined, given nasal drops containing a cold-causing virus (rhinovirus), and monitored for five days for signs of a common cold. But what treatments are really successful for treating a cold? To get to the bottom of those trustworthy options, we spoke to family medicine expert Neha Vyas, MD. First, cytokines, which are a type of immune system protein that targets infections, are produced and released during sleep. That's why you may get more sleep when you're sick; it's not a cause for concern, but a sign that your body is fighting infection.
For example, those who spent 92% of their time asleep in bed were five and a half times more likely to develop a common cold than those who spent 98% or more of their time sleeping in bed. People who sleep poorly also don't get the most benefit from flu shots, according to WebMD. While there is no evidence that directly links increased fluid intake to the ability to combat the cold, conventional wisdom holds that more water means thinner mucus, which at least will allow you to breathe more easily. After all, it's easy to want to ignore a cold, you have more important things to do than stay home and treat it.
Many of these symptoms are similar to those you might experience with a cold, but the main differences are high fever and muscle aches. If you get ragged when you don't feel well, even if you just have a common cold, you'll make things worse and take longer to recover. But if you go too far, cold treatments can have the opposite effect and worsen cold symptoms. A new study shows that people who sleep less than seven hours a night are three times more likely than those who sleep at least eight hours to get a common cold after being exposed to a virus that causes the cold.
