Go To Sleep -- Feel Better

As a mother it seems that sleep is one of the most valued commodities. When the kids are babies sleep is the ultimate goal -- both for your peace of mind and their good mood. As toddlers and little children it's the time their bodies grow. As teenagers it's their joy and our break. I still don't have the heart to wake up my sleeping teenager daughter unless I absolutely have to.

And no matter what age, whenever they are sick I immediately send them to bed.

And it turns out sleep does in fact help prevent against colds. In a recent study published in the Archives of Medicine, those who slept an average of fewer than seven hours a night were three times as likely to get sick as those who averaged at least eight hours.

As Anahad O'Connor reports in an article in the New York Times, sleep and immunity are tightly linked.

O'Connor also cites an interesting fact that mammals that require the most sleep also produce greater levels of disease-fighting white blood cells.