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How Sleep Will Help Your Cold
It’s that time of year again when sniffles, scratchy throats and coughs put a dampener on your day. As though the grey skies and continued rain wasn’t enough. Getting ready for the end of year festivities, or simply tying up loose ends at work before everyone goes AWOL over the holiday period, leaves little time for the slow-moving, stuffiness that comes with coping with a cold. While there are some sure-fire natural remedies that can help you soldier on, sleep is one of the best medication-free ways to get over a cold.
What is a cold?
Common throughout the colder months of the year, colds are caused by a group of about 200 different viruses that infect our bodies and invade our cells in order to reproduce. There’s no actual cure for a cold that can be purchased at the chemist or prescribed by the doctor. This is partly because viruses naturally mutate. Given the large group of cold inducing viruses and their ability to mutate in ways that allow them to successfully continue attacking humans, we’re unlikely to find something that will keep up with them.
However, our body is excellent at developing antibodies of its own in response to all manner of viral attacks. Once one virus has infected our system, the antibodies produced to defeat it remain in our arsenal and are generally able to conquer a second attack without us becoming ill.
