Improving immunity and avoiding illness for back-to-school season

September follows a pattern that repeats in almost every household with children.

They go back to school and within two weeks, there is congestion, coughing, and fever circulating through the living room.

The usual reaction is to buy vitamin C, echinacea, zinc, and probiotics.

Meanwhile, we adults keep sleeping six hours because we have to organize backpacks, extracurricular activities, and the work that piled up in August.

That is where the problem lies.

A group of researchers measured the sleep of 164 healthy adults for a week using a wrist sensor. Afterward, they administered rhinovirus to them nasally and kept them isolated for five days to see who got sick.

Those who slept less than six hours developed colds significantly more frequently than those who slept more than seven. You can see the study here.

A striking detail: waking up several times did not change the risk. What mattered was the total number of hours.

An important nuance: nobody assigned sleep hours at random. The participants slept what they slept, so we are talking about an association within a controlled experiment, not a causal proof.

Even so, the result held up after taking into account age, weight, stress, and previous defenses against the virus. And the practical message holds firm.

Sleep is not a supplement for your immune system. Everything points to it being part of its infrastructure.

And unlike a supplement, it does not depend on buying anything.

The study only measured colds in adults aged 18 to 55. It does not speak about your children or your aging process. But it does speak about the variable we neglect the most when the calendar fills up.

That is what we talk about in the Longevity Workshop and the private WhatsApp group: deciding what to prioritize when time is limited, using data rather than intuition.

This month, before ordering supplements, look at your bedtime.

Your 1% improvement for today.

Move your bedtime up by 20 minutes tonight. Repeat it tomorrow. It is the cheapest change you can try this week.

This is what I cover in the Longevity Workshop and Private Longevity WhatsApp Group: Before spending money on zinc and echinacea, in the Workshop and the WhatsApp group I teach you how to protect those seven hours of sleep.

Remember that I am now selling only ONE access to the Longevity Workshop and Private Longevity WhatsApp Group per day.

The price is set by Dutch auction.

It goes down throughout the day.

→ See the current price of the Longevity Workshop and Private Longevity WhatsApp Group