Have you ever wondered what role sleep plays in treating infectious diseases? Well, it contributes significantly to maintaining a healthy body. It’s linked to the immune system, where quality sleep helps fight off infections.
According to the sleep foundation, the immune system influences your overall health. It is critical to help:
- Heal wounds.
- Ward off infections.
- Protect against chronic illnesses.
Thus, an immune response, like the one caused by a viral infection, is impacted by sleep tremendously. Similarly, consistent sleep patterns strengthen the immune system. It allows for balanced and effective functioning of the immunity. In return, it helps fight off infectious diseases.
Having a healthy sleeping habit can help prevent and conquer infections. This is because sleep is linked with the production of substances like proteins and protein agonists.
Women, for example, who produce different hormones during menstruation or pregnancy may experience common infections like bacterial vaginosis.
With plenty of rest, such an infectious disease can clear up on its own. But, if you’re experiencing persistent symptoms like foul odor, itchiness, and increased vaginal discharge, you need another form of infection control.
Thankfully, there is an effective treatment for bacterial vaginosis. These are fast-acting relief medications. They help free you from persistent itching, odor, and excess vaginal discharge.
With the bacterial vaginosis treatment online, you can get the relief closer than you think and heal faster. Again, if you’re pregnant, you shouldn’t fear because there is a bacterial vaginosis treatment in pregnancy.
What Roles Does Sleep Play in Treating Infectious Diseases?
- Enables the Fighting and Prevention of Common Infections
The lack of sufficient sleep can raise the risk of common infections. This is mainly due to the lack of cytokines. These proteins contribute to the immune response by targeting infection and inflammation.
They are produced and released during sleep. It implies that unhealthy sleeping patterns can cause a deficiency in essential proteins. The sleep loss severity on the immune system varies based on:
- The amount of sleep lost
- How long has the problem persisted?
- How do you respond to the issue?
For people with chronic sleep loss, common vaccines like the flu vaccine indicate reduced effectiveness. This is due to the diminished body’s responsiveness to the vaccine.
But, when you start regaining your sleep, your body gets restored slowly. As a result, it can respond well to the vaccine’s effectiveness.
- Better Sleep Habits Helps in Strengthening the Body’s Immunity
It helps to ensure that after going about your everyday duties, you allow your body to rest and recover from the day. This is crucial for your immune system to function right at all times. Sleep and our body’s immune systems have a bidirectional relationship.
The immune system activation after poor sleep alters the adaptive form of our body’s defense mechanisms. Any microbial challenge that causes the stimulation of the immune system can trigger an inflammatory response. Based on its magnitude, it can cause an increase in your sleep intensity and duration. It may also disrupt your long-term sleep pattern.
Sleep enhancement during an infection is considered as feedback to the immune system. It helps promote host defense. Often, good sleep can affect various immune parameters. This reduces infection risk and can improve infection outcomes and vaccination responses.
- Quality Sleep Strengthens the T Cells That Fight Off Infections
According to medical news today, scientists discovered that quality sleep supports the T cells in your body to fight off infections. T cells are particular immune cells that fight against intracellular pathogens. Examples include virus-infected cells like the flu, herpes, HIV, and cancer cells.
So, whenever you mostly enjoy a restful night’s sleep, it helps enhance the ability of T cells to destroy cells infected by viruses and pathogens. The researchers also discovered a new mechanism via which rest can support the T-cells.
The study talks about the stress hormones (adrenaline and noradrenaline) which are also referred to as epinephrine and norepinephrine. They work together with prostaglandins- pro-inflammatory molecules.
They inhibit the stickiness of specific adhesion molecules known as integrins. And due to the adrenaline levels, noradrenaline and prostaglandins tend to be low during quality sleep time. As a result, the stickiness of the integrins will be stronger.
This kind of stickiness is crucial. It progressively enables the T groups to kill virus-infected cells, such as cancer cells. Here, the infected cells are in direct contact with the T-cells, where the integrin stickiness promotes this kind of contact. The result is that; the T-cells get strengthened to help fight off infections.
- Maintaining a Good Sleep Routine Keep Your Body Hormones Balanced
It helps to know that sleep affects your hormones tremendously. This includes those linked to stress or hunger. Too much sleep and also deprived rest can influence your body’s hormones. But, a good night’s sleep routine helps keep your hormones balanced.
What are hormones and how are they linked to your sleep?
Hormones are a form of chemical messengers that acts to regulate the many body’s functions, processes, and systems.
The body requires different hormones to operate right. They get released via the endocrine system, a channel of connected organs and glands found throughout the body.
The hormones carry out many bodily functions such as:
- Sleep-wake cycles
- Sexual drive and functions
- Reproduction
- Growth
- Appetite
- Metabolism
- Body temperature regulation
- Heart rate
- Blood pressure
Often, how the hormones function in the body is highly influenced by sleep. Various hormone releases are affected by the circadian rhythm. When you get adequate sleep, it helps regulate hormones, like:
- Estrogen and progesterone
- Insulin, leptin, and ghrelin
- Thyroid
- Cortisol
- Melatonin
- Growth hormones
Women, for example, need to maintain good sleep to balance their hormonal systems. Usually, sleep deprivation can cause lots of hormonal changes. It tends to happen in a sleepless vicious cycle.
You may be more vulnerable to health issues associated with sleep problems when the body’s hormonal levels spike up or drop. This is more evident during the different womanhood seasons. Such seasons include:
- The menstrual cycle
- During and after pregnancy
- Menopause
According to the CDC- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, bacterial Vaginosis (BV) is one common vaginal infection in women. Some people get BV due to their vaginal environment and body chemistry.
But, other cases may be stress-related, inclusive of sleep deprivation. Some hormones may spike up or go too low to induce such infections when your body is continually under pressure.
Getting enough body rest by sleeping well can help immensely reduce infections such as BV. But, in some instances, the condition may never clear off entirely in the first place. It may also clear up and come back.
Thus, you may be a candidate for lifestyle changes and bacterial vaginosis treatment to prevent BV recurrence in such cases. This will help you overcome sleep disorders and attain infection control.
Key Takeaways
Everyone who loves life would want to enjoy living healthily. Sleep is vital for plenty of health reasons. The quality of your sleep speaks much about your overall wellness. When you maintain a good sleep routine, your body can fight off possible infections.
Sleep enhancement during an infection is believed to feedback the immune system, which promotes host defense. This causes a reduced risk of infections. It can also improve the outcome of a disease and vaccination responses.
That way, your quality of life will also improve. Truly, infections can make you feel tired and stressed. As a result, you either sleep too much or fail to attain sound sleep. Thus, you can’t do things normally and enjoy life.
Prolonged sleep loss will weaken your body’s defense system. It makes you more prone to catching acute infections like colds or even serious ones like cancer.
But, a good night’s sleep is undoubtedly ‘the best medicine’ for an infectious disease. It acts as a defense mechanism and a form of infection control.
In short, you require a good sleep routine to live happily through the days. Fortunately, the choice is yours to decide today that nothing will deny you the sleep you need.
