4 ways the COVID19 pandemic changed the way we sleep Sleeping With Science
Transcriber: Leslie Gauthier
Reviewer:
The COVID pandemic has changed sleep
in at least four different ways:
quantity, quality, timing and dreaming.
[Sleeping with Science]
The first is sleep quantity.
A study conducted across Europe,
as well as the US and Asia,
found that on average people were sleeping
around 25 minutes more each night
during the pandemic.
Second, there has been
a change in sleep quality.
Now, sleep has of course been
a real challenge
for many of us during the pandemic.
And indeed, in the US,
almost 60 percent of people felt
that the quality of their sleep
had become worse during the pandemic.
However, 40 percent
of the people didn’t feel
that their sleep was any worse,
so there seems to be quite a difference
in the response across individuals
when it comes to sleep quality
and the pandemic.
The third change we’ve discovered
concerns sleep timing.
Since many people didn’t
have to commute to work
or get the kids to school in the morning,
on average, people were
going to bed later
and waking up later during the pandemic.
And I think this is a case
of “Revenge of the Night Owls.”
And I see it as one
of the positive consequences
that came out of the pandemic.
The fourth change is that people
reported dreaming more
and also having COVID-related dreams.
And this is likely due to the fact
that people were sleeping
later into the morning,
which is the time when we get
most of our dream sleep,
and the fact that dreaming
helps us deal with emotional trauma.
However, there are many
essential questions that still remain.
One that I am particularly
interested in answering
is whether or not a lack of sleep
before getting your COVID shot,
or your COVID booster in the future,
changes the effectiveness
of that vaccination,
just as we know it does
with your annual flu shot.
What we do know
for certain though is this:
your sleep health is intimately related
to your immune health.
Said simply:
sleep is a life support system.