When you don’t get enough sleep, your immune system, the body’s main line of defense against pathogens and other potential illness-causing agents, suffers.
Consider the results of a study that was reported in the journal Sleep in 2015 if you have any doubts.
What is the function of your immune system?
Research has shown that a variety of pathogens, or microorganisms that can make you sick, are almost always present in your body. The food you consume, the air you breathe, and the physical objects your body comes into contact with throughout the day all contain these pathogens.
You need a strong immune system to protect you from these pathogens as well as any other types of injury or disease that might develop in your body. It is composed of a complex network of proteins and cells that can recognize potential threats and plan a suitable response.
But when you don’t get enough sleep, your immune system and inflammatory responses are negatively impacted.
How Does Sleep Help the Immune System?
The first benefit of sleep is that it gives your body the chance to renew its immune cells. Swirski claims that these cells serve as the immune system’s foot soldiers. They conduct threat assessments and take part in host defense.
He says that unlike when you’re awake when you’re sleeping, the majority of your immune cells are produced. And this production is thrown off balance when you don’t get enough sleep.
Effects of Inflammation
Inflammation that spirals out of control may be one of the effects of that.
According to Dr. Dot Irwin, high inflammation can lead to the kind of internal damage or changes that result in heart disease, diabetes, and other medical diseases, all of which have been related to poor sleep in studies. While appropriate inflammation may help the body protect itself against dangers, Dr. Irwin says that too much inflammation can be harmful. Chronic illness symptoms such as pain and swelling, he claims, might intensify when there is too much inflammation.
Finally, it has been discovered (and reported in the aforementioned 2015 Sleep study) that, toward the end of a full night of sleep, immune cells migrate out of the blood and into the lymphoid organs, where viral pathogens frequently accumulate after entering the body.
You may not be able to effectively engage those pathogens with your immune cells if your migration is disrupted due to a lack of sleep. Poor sleep is linked to a higher risk of infections and illnesses, which may be one explanation for this.
What Proof Is There That Sleep Supports Immune Functioning?
Many studies have demonstrated that healthy sleep helps balance and regulate the immune system’s activity, aside from the 2015 study that found that people who lack sleep are more likely to contract the common cold.
Additionally, studies have shown that getting enough sleep helps these immune cells adhere to their targets correctly.
Swirski claims that disrupting sleep can affect immune cell production and rhythm, which can lead to the emergence of inflammatory diseases. In support of his claim, an additional study published in the journal Sleep has revealed that those who suffer from sleep disorders are more likely to develop autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis.
Chronic sleep problems have also been linked to a higher risk of diabetes, heart disease, and neuro degenerative illnesses like Alzheimer’s, according to a review of the literature. Another review reveals evidence that poor sleep quality increases the risk of developing many cancers as well as mental health conditions like depression.
Your health is unlikely to be made or broken by one restless night. At this point, however, it is obvious that your health will likely suffer if you frequently experience poor sleep.
Sleeping Tips for a Strong Immune System.
Despite recommendations from the National Sleep Foundation that adults get seven to nine hours of sleep each night, experts contend that overall sleep quality may be more crucial to immune system health than total sleep time.
1.Think about the quality of your sleep and how rested you feel in the morning.
Irwin claims that “poor sleep quality is a better predictor of inflammation than sleep duration.” We discovered that inflammation doesn’t increase until the final five to five-and-a-half hours.
Furthermore, he believes that even if a person receives a full eight hours of sleep each night, this does not guarantee that their sleep is restorative and useful to a robust immune system.”We find everything that is associated with increases in inflammation if they wake up feeling tired, they report waking up a lot during the night, or the quality of their sleep is poor,” he adds. This is true even for people who get ample sleep.
Asking yourself how you feel in the hours following your wake-up is one of the best ways, according to him, to evaluate your sleep. A sign that you had a restful night’s sleep is feeling refreshed and rested. “People also use gadgets like Fitbits and Apple watches to evaluate their sleep,” he says, “and I have found that they are very good at identifying the quality of your sleep.”
2.Be Consistent in Getting Better Sleep.
Irwin offers suggestions you’ve probably already heard of for improving sleep quality to support your immune system. Stick to a regular sleep-wake schedule, exercise during the day, and steer clear of alcohol and caffeine before bed, he advises.
3.Try to be more mindful.
Irwin also recommends mindfulness training. We gave people six weeks of mindfulness training for a JAMA Internal Medicine study, and we found improvements in sleep quality. He has now published another research that revealed that using a mindfulness app specifically, the Calm app for 10 minutes per day helped reduce daytime weariness and improve sleep quality.
Random Surveys:
Researchers monitored the sleep of 164 volunteers before purposefully exposing them to rhinovirus (the common cold) samples. The study discovered that a person was less likely to become ill the more sleep they had gotten in the days before the exposure. More than twice as many people got sick when they slept an average of fewer than five hours per night as people who slept an average of seven hours or more.
The idea that sleep is the best medicine has a lot of merits, according to Filip Swirski, Ph.D., a professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City and an expert on the connection between sleep and the immune system.
“Everyone knows that sleep disruption affects the cycle and production of immune cells, and if there is a threat to the immune system, a single night of poor sleep can affect the response,” he claims.
According to a study, a lack of sleep increases the risk of inflammatory and viral disorders. Dr. Dot Swirski and other experts address the importance of sleep for immune system health in this video.
