Over the short term, people who get less than six or seven hours of sleep per night have been shown to have a higher risk of infection from the common cold or the flu. During a healthy night of sleep, the inflammatory processes that take place because of our immune system will recede to a normal level before we wake up.

Over time, this low level of inflammation will gradually increase, not only leading to increased feelings of pain but also elevating the risk of various harmful diseases, such as diabetes , heart disease and even cancer. Depression has also been associated with a lack of sleep ; higher rates of insomniacs have been shown to suffer from the condition than individuals who maintain a healthy sleeping routine.

This, therefore, highlights the importance of sleep from both a physical and mental health perspective. While we may have focused up to now on how sleep impacts the immune system, the actions that our immune response triggers can also affect how we sleep.

Well, this is all thanks to your immune system. When we become sick, our immune system will trigger various responses to help make us feel better, including when we sleep. One of these processes is the onset of fever — a higher body temperature designed to create a more hostile environment for pathogens.

Thanks to this process, the preserved energy can then be better utilized by our immune system while we sleep, enabling it to, ultimately, make us feel better when we wake up.

For further hints and tips on how to implement a healthy sleeping pattern, check out some of our serious sleep hacks here. If not even a bang could disturb your slumber, you may be a heavy sleeper. Find out why and what you can do about it. Jan 24, Sleep Science Monica Garcia.

Dec 29, Sleep Science Susanne Lindberg Mikkelsen. For this fourth and final part in our series, our Head of Sleep Science Mike Gradisar will walk us through how melatonin can be used to lessen the impact of jet lag, and take you — literally — along for his recent ride from Australia to Sweden.

Oct 27, Sleep Science Dr. Michael Gradisar. Cortisol aka the stress hormone is vital for our health and necessary for our daily performance. But what is it and how does it affect sleep? We answer your most frequently asked questions about how cortisol interferes with sleep and explore ways to stimulate healthy cortisol levels.

Oct 20, Sleep Science Susanne Lindberg Mikkelsen. We take a closer look at the role of sleep or lack of it in the different phases of bipolar disorder. Oct 6, Sleep Science Anju Khanna Saggi. How does sleep strengthen the immune system? The impact and benefits of sleep on immunity Maintaining an effective immune response is all about balance.

Sleep eases allergic reactions Allergic reactions are another form of response triggered by your immune system and there is now growing evidence to suggest that sleep can impact how severely people react to specific allergens.

How does a lack of sleep make you sick? The impact of the immune system on sleep While we may have focused up to now on how sleep impacts the immune system, the actions that our immune response triggers can also affect how we sleep.

It has been linked to increased rates of hypertension, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, depression and cancer. The good news is that as soon as you start prioritizing sleep, your immune system can rebound quickly.

You might be shocked by how much time you spend surfing the web, watching TV and mindlessly scrolling on your phone.

Once you've gotten honest about what you do with your time, think about how you can cut down on those nonessential activities and reassign time for sleep instead. I also suggest putting your phone and computer in a drawer at the same time every evening.

Experts in human behavior have found that being successful at making healthy lifestyle choices is less about innate willpower and more about creating a lifestyle that makes these decisions easier. Your bedroom should be your sleep sanctuary. You don't need expensive linens, a weighted blanket or a cooling pad.

A comfortable mattress, high-quality pillow and soft bedding will do just fine. If you have indicator lights on electronics in your bedroom, cover them with black electrical tape.

If you have bright streetlights outside your window, use blackout curtains. If you can hear traffic noise, use a white noise machine to drown it out.

Finally, make sure your bedroom is nice and cool the optimal temperature for sleeping is around 65 degrees Fahrenheit or Insomnia is often caused by ruminating about things that haven't happened — or may never happen. One way to calm your mind and body is to journal before bedtime.

Processing your worries by writing them down has been found to help clear the mind of stressful thoughts so they won't keep you up at night.

Breathing exercises can help, too. If I'm in an anxious or worried state, or just a little amped up, I use the breath technique:. Magnesium is often referred to as the "relaxation" mineral, thanks to its demonstrated ability to combat insomnia.

You can always take a magnesium supplement, but one of my favorite ways to use it for sleep is by taking a warm Epsom salt bath. Magnesium sulfate is the main component of Epsom salt, and by penetrating your skin and muscles, it can have a relaxing effect. Even just soaking in a warm bath helps you fall asleep faster.

Blue light messes with your body's ability to prepare for sleep because it blocks a hormone called melatonin that makes you sleepy.

And given the excessive amounts of blue light in our homes i. Wearing these glasses has been shown to significantly improve sleep quality and decrease insomnia.

My favorites are Swanswick glasses, but there are several good manufacturers and prescription options as well. Implementing stretching or restorative yoga before bedtime can help with pain, elevated blood pressure, restless leg syndrome and anxiety. Just a few poses can engage your parasympathetic nervous system and help you sleep better.

I love doing legs-up-the-wall poses. And the best part is that you really only need five or so minutes to make a big difference. Heather Moday is a board-certified allergist, immunologist and functional medicine physician.

So sleep is essential for keeping the immune system at its best. Your sleep and your immune system are interlinked. Your immune system can be likened to an army protecting your body. Should one of these baddies try to breach your defences, your immune system steps in to try to vanquish invading germs inside the body.

You have two levels of immunity: the innate and the acquired immune systems. Think of the innate system as the first line of defence. Once a foreign organism has been detected, your immune system sends out signals which act to sound the alarm that a pathogen is present.

There are various ways in which the invader is then attacked and destroyed but, ultimately, the invading particle is broken down, any resulting waste material is removed and your innate immune system keeps waging its battle against invading foes.

Your adaptive or acquired immune system is more specialised. This is the part that can fully recognise an invading pathogen and then accurately and specifically target an invader for destruction. Each time your body encounters a new pathogen, your adaptive immune system takes a note of it. Records are kept about the best way to best deal with this latest invader should it ever come back.

Much like an army, the cells protecting your body can be split into different branches and all have their own specialisms. T cells are a type of white blood cell and fall into two categories: helper T cells and cytotoxic T cells.

Helper T cells raise an alarm that an intruder is in the body. They do this by releasing molecular signals that let other immune cells know that an attack is under way and that help is needed.

Cytotoxic T cells have a much more direct role in fighting infection. They recognise cells that have been invaded by pathogens and they attach directly to those cells, using various methods to destroy them.

Sleep fact: When scientists compared T cells from volunteers who were allowed to sleep for 8 hrs a night with those who stayed awake all night, they found that the T cells in the sleep-deprived group had a much lower ability to bind to a key molecule featured in the immune response.

Without their ability to stick, they cannot fulfil their role in the immune response. This study therefore sheds light on how sleep deprivation can directly affect our immune response. B cells have antibodies on their surface that can bind to pathogens as well as other things.

It helps to think of the antibody like a jigsaw piece. On the surface of the B cell is one jigsaw piece of a two-piece puzzle. B cells float around the body and when they come into contact with a virus or bacteria that happens to have the other half of the jigsaw on its surface, then the B cell binds to it.

This signals that an invader has been found and targeted for destruction. Helper T cells can bind to B cells to allow them to secrete multiple copies of their specific antibody. The free antibody which will then bind to any pathogen they are specific to and target them for destruction. They can also become memory B cells — essentially remembering a specific pathogen so that they can react appropriately if they come across it again.

We have natural killer NK cells that will destroy cells that have been invaded and taken over by pathogens. They do this by secreting compounds that tell the infected cell to shut itself down by a process known as programmed cell death. NK cells play an essential role in killing tumour cells and research has shown that reduced NK cell function is associated with a 1.

Once the pathogens are inside these cells, phagocytes use various methods to break down the invading pathogens to get rid of them. Each type of phagocyte has its own locality and superpower:.

All of the cells detailed above have multiple other roles in addition to those listed above and there is huge cross-talk and co-operation between them.

Your immune cells and many others also secrete small proteins known as cytokines, which have a huge role in the immune response. They are crucial to your immune response and there are many different families and subgroups of cytokines which perform a whole host of different roles within your body.

Sleep fact : Research has shown that restricting sleep led to the generation of inflammatory cytokines which are known to play a role in the development of heart, blood vessel and metabolic disorders.

Several reports have shown that poor sleep increases the chances of becoming infected after being exposed to the cold virus. A recent study from the University of California in San Francisco showed that people who slept fewer than six hours each night during the course of a week were more than 4.

However, it should be noted that the researchers deliberately tried to infect the participants by directly administering nasal drops containing the cold virus.

Infection can often affect sleep patterns and you may find yourself experiencing periods of longer and deeper sleep when you fall ill. Why is that? During the active phase of the immune response your body may seek to increase the duration of N3, slow-wave sleep deep sleep and decrease wakefulness and REM sleep.

These changes to sleep may help your body to devote more resources to fighting an infection. We can work with you to find the root cause of your sleep problems and help you to improve your sleep.

In a study of people infected with a common cold virus, participants experienced decreased sleep time. Bacterial infections also cause sleep disturbances. For example, human Lyme disease, caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi , is associated with chronic fatigue and sleep disorders.

Sleep disorders can also develop during or after bacterial infections that target the respiratory system. People with the bacterial infection listeriosis show increased total amounts of sleep, characterised by increased daytime sleep, less night-time sleep and longer durations of observed awakenings during the night.

This is based on the observation that many people with narcolepsy have antibodies to Streptococcus and Helicobacter pylori , which are associated with autoimmune diseases.

These antibodies may be a trigger for narcolepsy through some autoimmune mechanisms. Parasitic infections, such as malaria, filariasis, and trypanosomiasis, appear to change sleep patterns by impacting upon the immune response.

A study examining links between sleep duration and parasitic infection levels looked at 12 mammalian species and found that longer sleep duration was linked with lower parasitic infection levels. This finding led the authors to suggest that sleep evolved, in part, to protect animals from parasitic infections.

Our body clock controls when we sleep and wake and research suggests it also plays a critical role in optimising immune system function. Recent studies show links between activity and sleep patterns in opposition to the natural body clock including night-shift work and raised levels of inflammation in the body.

Delayed sleep patterns sometimes caused by shift-work can disrupt the normal body clock. When frequently people stay up late for work or pleasure and sleep through the day this disruption to the body clock leads to chronic inflammation in the body.

Our body clock regulates when the levels of certain molecules of the immune system rise and fall. The good news is that as soon as you start prioritizing sleep, your immune system can rebound quickly. You might be shocked by how much time you spend surfing the web, watching TV and mindlessly scrolling on your phone.

Once you've gotten honest about what you do with your time, think about how you can cut down on those nonessential activities and reassign time for sleep instead.

I also suggest putting your phone and computer in a drawer at the same time every evening. Experts in human behavior have found that being successful at making healthy lifestyle choices is less about innate willpower and more about creating a lifestyle that makes these decisions easier.

Your bedroom should be your sleep sanctuary. You don't need expensive linens, a weighted blanket or a cooling pad. A comfortable mattress, high-quality pillow and soft bedding will do just fine. If you have indicator lights on electronics in your bedroom, cover them with black electrical tape.

If you have bright streetlights outside your window, use blackout curtains. If you can hear traffic noise, use a white noise machine to drown it out. Finally, make sure your bedroom is nice and cool the optimal temperature for sleeping is around 65 degrees Fahrenheit or Insomnia is often caused by ruminating about things that haven't happened — or may never happen.

One way to calm your mind and body is to journal before bedtime. Processing your worries by writing them down has been found to help clear the mind of stressful thoughts so they won't keep you up at night.

Breathing exercises can help, too. If I'm in an anxious or worried state, or just a little amped up, I use the breath technique:. Magnesium is often referred to as the "relaxation" mineral, thanks to its demonstrated ability to combat insomnia.

You can always take a magnesium supplement, but one of my favorite ways to use it for sleep is by taking a warm Epsom salt bath. Magnesium sulfate is the main component of Epsom salt, and by penetrating your skin and muscles, it can have a relaxing effect.

Even just soaking in a warm bath helps you fall asleep faster. Blue light messes with your body's ability to prepare for sleep because it blocks a hormone called melatonin that makes you sleepy. And given the excessive amounts of blue light in our homes i.

Wearing these glasses has been shown to significantly improve sleep quality and decrease insomnia. My favorites are Swanswick glasses, but there are several good manufacturers and prescription options as well.

Implementing stretching or restorative yoga before bedtime can help with pain, elevated blood pressure, restless leg syndrome and anxiety. Just a few poses can engage your parasympathetic nervous system and help you sleep better. I love doing legs-up-the-wall poses.

And the best part is that you really only need five or so minutes to make a big difference. Heather Moday is a board-certified allergist, immunologist and functional medicine physician. She is also the author of " The Immunotype Breakthrough: Your Personalized Plan to Balance Your Immune System, Optimize Health, and Build Lifelong Resilience.