University Times

Want to reduce your chances of getting a cold this winter? Get more involved with people – children, relatives, friends, social groups, church groups, co-workers.

While it might seem as if exposure to more people is an invitation for a cold, studies by Pitt adjunct professor of psychology and psychiatry Sheldon Cohen and colleagues have found exactly the opposite to be true.

In "You Gotta Have Friends! Social Conflicts, Social Ties and Susceptibility to Infection," a Sept. 29 lecture at the School of Nursing, Cohen said the people who are least likely to contract a cold are those with six or more social roles.

"People with one to three social roles are over four times more likely to get sick than those with six or more roles," Cohen said.

Social interaction appears to stimulate the immune system. In Cohen's studies, social roles were defined as interacting at least once every two weeks in the role of parent, child, child-in-law, close relative, close friend, member of a social or church group.

His studies also found that introverts are 2.5 times more likely to contract a cold than extroverts. But even when the personalities of introverts and extroverts are taken into account, people with more social roles were less likely to catch a cold.

Other factors that contribute to susceptibility to colds, according to Cohen, include health practices and stress.

In the area of health practices, smokers were found to be three times more likely to become ill with a cold than nonsmokers, while people who exercised less than twice a week were almost twice as likely to get a cold.

Other health practices, or lack of, that contributed to the likelihood of contracting a cold included insufficient sleep and insufficient amounts of vitamin C in the diet. People who did not get enough sleep were 2.6 times more likely to catch a cold, while those with insufficient vitamin C in their diet were about twice as likely to get a cold.

Taking mega-doses of vitamin C, however, does not help fend off colds, according to Cohen. All that is needed is the regular daily requirement, he said.

Lovers of happy hour also can take heart. Cohen's studies indicate that people who drink less than one alcoholic drink per day are twice as susceptible to colds as those who have a drink or two, according to Cohen.

In the case of stress, Cohen and his colleagues found that an increase in a person's stress level that lasted a month or longer brought "an increased probability of developing a cold." The top stress-causing category for increasing susceptibility to infection was work-related stress, especially being unemployed or under employed, followed by marital/partnership stress and other relationship stress.

People afflicted with work-related stress were about five times more likely to develop colds than those without work stress, while persons with interpersonal difficulties were about three times more likely to develop a cold.

Money/possession stress, housing stress and crime/legal stress, the other categories of stress used in the study, did not result in a significant increase in colds.

"What we demonstrated is that interpersonal conflicts put people at greater risk," Cohen said.

He noted that studies have shown stress is related to greater susceptibility to infection, and enduring social conflicts, those lasting at least a month, are a factor in susceptibility.

"We also found that social imbeddedness or social integration, having a very diverse social network, protects people," Cohen said.

–Mike Sajna