Sleep and the Immune system

One third of your whole life you are asleep….like 25years of your life if you die at 75.

Apart from avoiding the embarrassment of sleeping in public or aiming to concentrate more during work or class sleep has ties to how your immune system functions. As we many might know or guess good sleep hygiene has many benefits from improved cognition, memory and mood to less inflammation. On the other end of spectrum lack of sleep predisposes you to health risks.

On average 7 hours of sleep is the optimal duration sleep one should get with variations of course. Getting less than 4.5 is risky and so sleeping more 8.5 ( Not forgetting you’ll fail your exam, get fired or be a lazy businessman/woman). more risks are associated with less sleep as people who sleep more have sleep maintenance issues and are just compensating by spending more time in bed.

So the elephant in the room; what does this have to with immunity?

The body works differently when we are awake and when we sleep following a rhythm called the circadian rhythm( basically daytime/nighttime) . Remember our good friends adrenaline and noradrenaline ?( if not check out my previous article about stress and the immune system) Their levels are relatively high during the day and go down during sleep hours. So if you sleep less( Worse when it is an habit) your engine is always at full throttle and as I earlier said in my previous article this triggers a stress response by the release of cortisol which ends up dampening the immune system.

This is bad because it increases chances/risk for things like cancer, heart disease and depression. And with the dampening of the immune system animal research studies show that this eventually reduces the body’s capability to fight infections and eliminate toxins. This is why during sickness sleep is promoted by the body in order to focus resources elsewhere.

And am sure you see the deadly combination because in most cases stress leads to lack of sleep leading to more stress and therefore even lesser sleep and down goes the spiral. In another workshop I attended sleep depravation was also linked to addictions.

It difficult to sleep a constant number of hours in the current world setting, with school, work and other commitments. But try by all means to avoid that becoming a habit . Have days which you can sleep until you are no longer tired.

This article is for information and educational purposes only. inspired from the book: AN ELEGANT DEFENSE

@Chungamu