COVID And Sleep
Sleep and sickness are deeply connected. Sleep is the soothing balm of sickness. It is the “Ahhhhhh” for the body while it struggles and fights through sicknesses and illnesses of all types.
Right now the health concern on everyone’s mind is COVID-19. COVID has flipped our world upside down and has challenged us all in our knowledge of illnesses and disease. Since this global pandemic hit, questions about the relationship between sleep and COVID have been floating around.
While sleep certainly isn’t a cure for COVID and all safety precautions such as wearing a mask, washing your hands and practicing social distancing can help protect you from the virus, there has been an interesting connection made between resisting COVID-19 and sleep.
Sleep & The Immune System
Many people have a basic understanding of how sleep impacts your immune system. A strong immune system can help your body remain strong while fighting a virus. On the same side sleep deprivation can make your body run down and less capable of fighting off viruses.
But does this relationship pertain to the pandemic?
COVID-19 and Sleep
The connection between sleep, immunity and recovery from COVID-19 was explored early on in the pandemic. An article from The Atlantic explores the research path of Feixiong Cheng, a data analyst from the Cleveland Clinic, as he began to search for potential ways to limit the spread of and protect against the Coronavirus. He came across a unique finding: sleep could play a bigger role in protecting against COVID than one may think.
This connection is broken down into two main pieces: the act of sleep itself and the hormone melatonin.
Melatonin can help to collaborate the immune system, helping it to reset and acting as a moderator during the recovery process. It’s like a grandmother to our biological self-protection system. It watches over us to make sure everything is working as it should. At a most basic level, the lack of a proper immune system or a system that works as it should can help the virus spread quicker within our bodies. To put it simply, this study found that melatonin and those with higher levels of melatonin could help increase tolerance against the virus.
The second connection between melatonin and COVID is the actual outcome that melatonin brings: sleep. Sleep, like with every other disease, is key to helping our bodies rest and recover. Sleeping while sick helps your body focus on healing while slowing down all parts of your body; heart rates slow, muscle activity slows, blood pressure can change and even breathing rates and slow down. In general, your entire body enters a mode of rest. It is in this resting state that healing can happen.
Treatment, Prevention & Immunity
Just like every other disease, COVID-19 is a complex virus that has some of the greatest minds in the world looking at it.
It’s important to make one thing clear: Sleep and melatonin will not make anyone immune from this disease.
In many cases, especially in one where the disease is so new and we are all trying to keep health top of mine, immunity is not the goal. The goal is to do what you can to keep yourself and those around you healthy. At the same time, stereotypical “healthy” people have had terrible symptoms with the disease.
This disease is not even a full year old. There are many unknowns about it still yet to be explored including the long term impact at an individual level, and how sleep and other day-to-day habits can increase an individual’s chance of getting it.
Melatonin & Sleep Recovery
If there’s one thing to take away from the Cleveland Clinic study it’s that there’s more to COVID-19 than we know right now. While it is a complex virus, it is a virus. And while sleep and melatonin will not make anyone immune, proper sleep cycles could help to increase your ability to fight off the virus.
If you have any concerns during the pandemic about your sleeping habits, AccqSleepLabs are open and performing sleep studies. All our labs have been updated to exceed safety standards. If you are curious about the sleep study process or how we are keeping our technicians and patients safe during COVID, feel free to contact us so we can answer all your questions.