Why we need to sleep
There is no doubt that sleep is a vital function when it comes to maintaining optimal health and wellbeing of a person. Sleep is needed. We don’t usually embrace the necessity of a good nights sleep because it’s a normal, mundane thing, like brushing our teeth.
When you’ve had a long day at the office or worked out extra hard at the gym, sleep is a way our body tells us it needs to rest and recharge. Sleep is our superpower. From learning something new to remembering what you’ve learnt, you need to sleep to press that save button in your brain.
Sleep is such a vital part of our life. In the 21st century, millennials are absorbed with being productive and committed to getting work done at the price of getting less sleep. You’ve probably heard a co-worker boast about their ability to run on 4–5 hours of sleep.
Neuroscientist Matthew Walker, who focuses on the impact of sleep on human health, said in his book “Why We Sleep”, says,
The physical and mental impairments caused by one night of bad sleep dwarf those caused by an equivalent absence of food or exercise.
Lack of sleep is a serious matter. Increasing our caffeine intake to feel more energized is compromising with our gut microbiome, which is in turn affecting our sleep, but more on caffeine later.
While there are several reasons why a good nights sleep is a necessity for overall health and longevity, it’s incredibly essential for our immune system.Not enough sleep can destruct your immune system, the system that is committed to keeping you well.
Two complex bodily functions — sleep and the immune system are closely connected. It’s a bi-directional relationship, meaning not only does insufficient sleep weaken your immune system, but an overactive immune system can also lead to poor sleep.
Let’s talk about an important part of the immune system known as inflammation.
What is Inflammation
Let’s say you step on a pin. You think “ouch”. Instantly your body springs to action. Your blood cells called platelets join together around the prick and begin to form a clot that would stop the bleeding. A certain chemical (known as Cytokines) is released into the bloodstream, which attracts the attention of certain cells to start healing your cut. This acts as a trigger, and anything that threatens your survival your immunity is going to flare up to protect you. The injured area will have a slight swell, due to the sudden rush of blood cells and oxygen to that area. This swelling is known as inflammation.
According to NCBI, inflammation is the body’s immune system’s response to an irritant or a threat or a disease.
Remember, your immune systems only job is to protect you. Inflammation is a response from your body to fight off pathogens that threaten your wellbeing and help the body heal as fast as possible.
So, you must think inflammation is a good thing because it’s crucial for keeping us alive. But, when it goes out of control, your immunity goes out of control too, it can put you into autoimmunity. Here’s where the immune system goes out of whack and attacks the body itself. Rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and type 1 diabetes too are types of autoimmune diseases.
It becomes a problem if it’s ongoing, or happens too often, or at the wrong times. The development of heart disease, stroke, diabetes is linked to chronic inflammation. This sets the body’s immune system in a continuous fight mode. The disease-fighting cells are activated with no threat to fight against. These cells then go on to damage healthy cells, tissues, organs and systems throughout the body.
If we understand what triggers chronic inflammation, we can take measures to avoid it. While several factors determine your health and longevity, sleep is one of the largest contributors that keep you healthy.
How are sleep and inflammation connected?
Categorical research has conducted to find the link between sleep and inflammation. The regulator that drives various hormones and physiological changes also regulate our sleep. This regulator is known as circadian rhythms. These are the rhythms that keep us on the right track.
These circadian rhythms also regulate our immune system. Sleep deprivation and restriction have been linked to detrimental effects on the immune system. Our immune system needs sleep to restore, regenerate and heal you from any threat that has been caused to our body.
When our sleep is disrupted, our circadian rhythm is disrupted, this then leads to the dysregulation of our immune responses and inflammation which is in tune disrupts the circadian rhythm. This further leads to increased inflammation in our body, making us prone to harmful inflammation leading us to other chronic diseases such as heart disease, blood pressure and type 2 diabetes.
Following the circadian is essential, your body is sensitive to the light around you, which is why it’s suggested to sleep with curtains closed. Sleeping for 7–8 hours is only useful if it’s quality sleep. If it’s not quality sleep, the damage due to the disrupted sleep is being accumulated. Going to bed, and waking up at the same time everyday forces our circadian rhythm to be consistent, maintaining a healthy immune function.
Less Sleep, No Sleep, More Sleep
We’re already that sleep deprivation and prolonged periods of no-sleep can lead to increased inflammation. Scientists have studied the everyday, chronic, sleep loss that we experience in our day-to-day lives, also leads to an elevation in inflammation. Like I mentioned before, the damage is being accumulated.
It might come as a surprise to you that even sleeping more than you should spark harmful inflammation. In research investigated 72 scientific studiesthat looked into the relationship between sleep and inflammation.
In addition to finding out the adverse effects of sleeping less, it was also found that sleeping more led to increased inflammation.
They used C-reactive and other inflammatory markers in our body to assess the relationship as they are related to systemic inflammation which is associated with heart diseases, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes.
Getting the right amount of sleep every day (7–9 hours for most adults) is the best way to be consistent and to avoid systemic inflammation.
Compromising Sleep
Unless you are a medically prescribed insomniac, your body needs sleep. When you sleep, your body heals. All the energy consumed doing everyday tasks is all directed towards fighting off microbes harming you and healing your body.
So, if you compromise your sleep, your healing is compromised. Depriving of it because of social media, partying all night, working endlessly or pretending to be insomniac causes serious problems.
All these nights of less, low-quality sleep does damage to your immune functions. Even if you won’t notice it at first, the damage is being accumulated.
Remember, quality matters too?
Sleep disturbance or not having quality 7–9 hours of sleep every day will also trigger inflammation and hamper productivity and energy levels in day-to-day activities.
Neuroscientist Matthew Walker, said in his book “Why We Sleep”, that:
We’ve discovered that fragmented sleep is associated with a unique pathway — chronic circulating inflammation throughout the bloodstream — which, in turn, is linked to higher amounts of plaques in the coronary artery.
Fragmented sleep is repeated, short sleep interruptions during the night.
How To Sleep Better?
Just like eating well, better sleep is dependent on several factors. It’s essential to ensure that you get not only enough but qualitative and deep sleep as well.
Here are some tips to help you sleep better:
Sleep in a dark, cold room: Allowing your body to prepare to shut down for a bit will make you feel relaxed, and in a cold room will maintain a body temperature to help you drift away faster.
Eat dinner before sunset: Gives you and your body plenty of time to finish part of the digestion and dedicate some energy towards the healing. You might want to have a 4–5 hour break from eating before you sleep.
Don’t rest until noon on the weekend: Just a single day of lousy waking up can mess up the circadian rhythm and can lead to a pro-inflammatory response.
Don’t work in your bedroom: Only go to your bedroom when you are done with the day and know you will sleep the second you hit the bed. This also makes you not check your phone minutes before sleeping.
Soothe yourself: Make yourself a hot cup of camomile or peppermint tea and play some calming music, or draw yourself a bath with Epsom salt, it helps soothe your internal system, putting you in a calm mood.
Two Important Factors
A healthy immune function is the result of interdependency between a good lifestyle, good food and sound sleep. We understood the importance of a good nights sleep, but the two other factors also play an essential role in maintaining a healthy balance.
Stress
A good lifestyle is free from stress. While it might not be possible to get rid of stress, we can always find ways to de-stress. Stress plays a significant role in the sleep-inflammation relationship.
When you are angry, agitated, worried, or have something continually occupying your mind, make it extremely hard for you to fall asleep. It’s a downward spiral — you go to bed stressed out, find it hard to fall asleep leading to disrupted sleep which in turn leads to having an emotionally and physically draining day, leading to long-term sleep problems.
In this modern age, being stressed out because your startup is on the verge of failing or because of climate change is plausible. We cannot get out of the stress bubble.
Biologically, this stress if prolonged, causes chronic stress, and this instantly put our immune system into fight or flight mode, where it would do anything to protect you from any threat. This alters the immune function and inflammations goes out of whack. This chronic inflammation then deteriorates our healthy cells making us prone to disease.
In fact, in a study, it was found that the interconnection between chronic stress and increased inflammation led to the development of a range of diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease and depressions.
So, like I mentioned before we can de-stress. Finding ways to allow yourself to not think about your stress-trigger. At least for some time, preferably before you go to bed. Here are some quick tips on how you can do that:
Meditate: Whatever way you do. Even if you don’t just try to sit with yourself for 10 mins quietly. Forget about meditative music etc. just sit. Alone. Just welcome every thought and let it go with grace. Close your eyes if you want.
Go for a walk: Just for a 10-minute walk. Preferably, without music and by yourself.
Do some simple yoga poses: Don’t push yourself, do a bit of yoga to calm yourself down. Here’s one I follow, it’s great!
Put your phone away: Try not to use your phone RIGHT before you sleep. I would suggest you give an hour without your phone before bedtime.
Try colouring: Get some cheap colours, and scribble, colour whatever gives you joy.
Do some deep breathing: This allows the removal of excess carbon dioxide (toxins) from your body and enables the flow of more oxygen in your body. Try this technique out.
Seriously, put your phone away: Just do it.
Gut Health
I have rambled on about gut health previously; it’s my favourite thing to study. Everything is connected to the gut. The largest part of our immune system resides in our gut. Our entire gut is lined up with millions of microbes that pretty much control our health and wellbeing. It has so much control that it’s popularly known as our “second brain”.
While diet plays a vital role in maintaining a healthy gut, other factors such as exercise, surroundings and sleep too, disruption in your circadian rhythms can change the composition of our gut bacteria.
A single night alters your immune system; it can heal in a night or worsen in a night.
Sleep and gut health have a give-and-take relationship. Sleeping well helps maintain a healthy gut and maintaining a healthy gut; by managing stress, exercise and eating well, can help you sleep better. These are pillars to a healthy lifestyle and protection to any threat or disease.
Final Words
Lack of proper sleep can cause problems that won’t be visible immediately. The chronic inflammation caused within your body because of disrupted sleep doesn’t always come with symptoms.
Just because a threat doesn’t show symptoms doesn’t mean it’s not doing the damage. Sleep is the easiest medicine to regulate, and the best tool to prepare and strengthen your body’s immune system.
Compromising your sleep is an insult to your body. Make sleep your priority.