Getting a good night of sleep is one of the strategies necessary to ensure a healthy immune response. As we sleep, our bodies go through 5 stages during a sleep cycle. Stages 1 is the transition to sleep, stage 2 is light sleep and you are easily woken up, stages 3 and 4 are deep sleep, and the last is REM sleep. It is in the deep sleep stages that we want to focus, because it is during these 2 phases of sleep the body renews and physiologically repairs.
What constitutes a good night sleep though? According to research* the ideal amount of sleep is over 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. In this time, our body can go through 5-6 sleep cycles and our immune cells are allowed to follow their inherent circadian rhythm. It has been found that subjects that got 8 hours or more of sleep per night were less likely to get a cold, had a reduced likelihood of diabetes, produced fewer inflammatory substances (cytokines), and had overall reduced mortality.
There is overwhelming evidence that sleep improves immune defense, therefore changing your sleep environment to ensure 8 hours of sleep per night will improve your defenses against disease. If you aren’t sure exactly how to get yourself to sleep there is a host of literature on sleep hygiene that is very useful. The basics are:
- Avoid caffeine or other stimulants after 3PM.
- Make your bedroom a sleep sanctuary. Eliminate anything that will wake you from sleep.
- Turn off screens (phone, tablet, TV) 1 hour before you’d like to go to sleep. Read a book instead
- Have a consistent sleep schedule.
- Get exposure to natural sunlight as much as possible. This promotes natural melatonin production at night.
- Exercise in the morning or early afternoon. Just not before bed.
- If your mind races, write it down in a notebook by your bed.
- Be consistent. Remember what you do consistently will get you results.
*Crit Care Nurse (2012) 32 (2): e19–e25