How sleep can improve your immunity Sleeping with Science a TED series
Transcriber: TED Translators admin
Reviewer: Ivana Korom
Often when we’re sick
typically what we want to do
is just curl up in bed
and go to sleep.
And in part what we’re trying to do
is sleep ourselves well,
because there’s a very
intimate association
between our sleep health
and our immune health.
[Sleeping with Science]
We know that individuals reporting
less than seven hours of sleep a night
are almost three times more likely
to become infected by the rhinovirus,
otherwise known as the common cold.
We also know that women
sleeping five hours or less a night
are almost 70 percent more likely
to develop pneumonia.
Well we’ve also discovered
that sleep can play a role
in your successful immunization.
So in one study,
they took a group of individuals
and they limited them
to four hours of sleep a night
for six nights.
And in the other group,
they gave them a full night of sleep
each and every one of those nights.
And then during that time period,
they gave them a flu shot
and they measured
the response to that flu shot.
What they discovered
is that in those individuals
who were sleeping just four hours a night,
they went on to produce
less than 50 percent
of the normal antibody response.
So in other words,
if you’re not getting sufficient sleep
in the week or the days
before you get your flu shot,
it may render that vaccination
far less effective as a consequence.
What this tells us,
and now what we’re starting to learn,
is that it’s during sleep at night,
including deep non-REM sleep,
when we actually restock the weaponry
within our immune arsenal.
We actually stimulate the production
of numerous different immune factors.
And furthermore,
the body actually increases
its sensitivity to those immune factors.
So you wake up the next day
as a more robust immune individual.
So when it comes to your immune system,
you should perhaps think of sleep
as one of the best
health insurance policies
that you could ever wish for.