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Sleep has been the hot topic of debate and controversy for some time now. In this world of constant pressure and a million things demanding your attention, sometimes it becomes difficult to squeeze everything in the 24 hours you get. It gets very tempting to push back sleep especially when you don’t see any benefits attached to it. For most people sleep is an overrated activity nothing better than wastage of time! But is it? This article will help explain if and how important sleep can be for your health and if sleep helps your immunity stay strong.
Sleep is the most important function of your body. It is the period when your body slows down all the other functions and concentrates on the repair of the daily wear and tear that your body has gone through during the day. In simplest terms sleep can be defined as a naturally recurring state in which your body undergoes:
This prepares your body for the onslaught of the next day. It’s not just the physical aspect that sleep helps you recover from. During sleep, your mental faculties also get refreshed.
It’s important to remember that while getting more sleep than required won’t necessarily stop or prevent you from getting sick, but lack of sleep, especially over, some time will wreak havoc on your body.
The factor in your body that helps protect you from infections, diseases and otherwise is responsible for your general well being is the immunity of your body. Immunity takes care of preventing and limiting of infections. It is primarily of three types:
For your immunity to function optimally it needs optimal rest. It is only when you rest that you can work again. Continuous working tires you and your immunity out. While you are awake your immunity is awake as well. It is continuously working to keep those infections and inflammations at bay. Hence you need to sleep to provide your body and immunity the window period to refresh and rejuvenate. The question that now arises is how does the body refresh and rejuvenate its immunity during sleep?
Your body is a complex mechanism. During sleep not only does your body concentrate on gearing up for the next day it is also busy producing certain antigens to protect you from the foreign bodies. Your immunity system becomes stronger when it is well-rested. During sleep, the immunity with the help of “T – Cells” produces a protein known as “Cytokines”. It is these cytokines that are responsible for fighting off infections and inflammations in your body.
As per Britannica T-Cells or T – Lymphocyte is a type of white blood cells and primary importance to your immunity. The T – cells are at the core of your adaptive immunity. Adaptive immunity being the immunity that “adapts” to the different pathogens that invade your body. It effectively streamlines your defense mechanism to suit the type of bacteria or virus that attacks your system. They search out and destroy the foreign invaders. In other words, T – Cells determine the specificity with which your immune system responds. Hence you can appreciate the importance of these T – Cells.
The T – Cells need to be mature to afford you their protection. Immature T – Cells are also known as T – Stem cells mature in the thymus gland of the body. These mature T – Cells then differentiate into different types and become active in your immune system.
T – Cells form the core of your adaptive immunity. They have two major immunity functions in your body:
Hence cytokines are an essential component of the immunity system. When your body is not rested enough the T-cells of the immune system will produce lesser cytokines.
Sleep plays a crucial role in the T – cell functions and hence immunity. The basic problem comes when your body is not rested well i.e. when you don’t get enough sleep. Sleep not just helps in repair work but also aids immunity. How to sleep aids immunity are listed below:
All these mental and physical conditions stress out your immunity. Whenever your body is not feeling optimal your immunity gets thrown off gear especially when the reason is something innate and not a foreign object of particle. This exerts immense pressure on your immune system thereby compromising it over time.
Ideally, you should be aiming at 7 to 9 hours of sleep as per Sleep Health Journal. Now that you understand the importance of sleep it makes sense to look out for the telltale signs of not getting enough snoozes. Some of these are:
It’s important to understand the underlying causes of not getting enough sleep. This will help you pinpoint the exact reason and work on it to improve your sleep quotient and hence your immunity. The causes are generally lifestyle-related and not chronic causes and hence easily rectified. Some common causes of not getting enough sleep are:
You just like everybody else will want your immunity to be top-notch. After understanding how pivotal your sleep is to your immunity level you must be keen to catch up with those sleepy hours. Some helpful tips to get you to sleep better are:
Yes, sleeping better is known to boost your immunity health. Boosting immunity is a threefold plan. It involves a mixture of a good diet, exercise, and sleep. Sleeping helps your immunity work efficiently and effectively.
Sleep deprivation is a term used for prolonged periods of going with less sleep than is required by your body. Sleep deprivation makes your immune system go crazy. It can lead to it going on overdrive and hence triggering the autoimmune disease.
Not getting enough sleep has a lot of effects on your body. These effects can be both mental and physical. Some common results of sleep deprivation are obesity, depression, stress, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.
Sleeping less will make your body and immune system tired. Your immune system will not be able to work efficiently or effectively under such conditions. Hence when attacked by an infection the immunity will not respond effectively leading to fever. So sleep by itself will not cause a fever but it can lead to fever by compromising your immunity.
Immunity is your defense mechanism. As such you should take very good care of keeping your immunity in top form. One of the most important and pivotal factors to immunity is sleep. You should aim to give your body the sleep it requires to be able to function both optimally and efficiently. Remember a good healthy lifestyle begins from within. Taking care of your immunity will automatically lead you to take care of all the external factors crucial to good health.
Much has been said about afternoon naps or daytime naps in general. A short nap can make you more efficient leading to better performance. It helps you...
Do you or the people around you talk in their sleep? Do you wonder why do people talk in their sleep? Many people are habitual of talking while they are...
As important as sleep is, even the best of us miss out on it. Be it stress or illness, travel, or some obligation, the interruptions to sleep are plenty. Lack...
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