Chronic sleep deprivation is a fact of life for many. It’s easy to prioritize other parts of life over sleep: family, work, socializing, and alone time can all seem more important than getting seven to nine hours of slumber a night.
Although time spent sleeping can feel like wasted time, it’s actually incredibly valuable for your physical and mental health. It supports memory formation, brain function, immune response, tissue repair and regeneration, metabolism --- the list goes on.
Sleep also has a complicated connection to inflammation, so if you’re struggling with both sleep and inflammation and you’re wondering whether the two could be connected, the answer is that they very well could be.
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The connection between sleep and inflammation
Before we get into the connection between sleep and inflammation, it’s important to establish what exactly inflammation is.
What is inflammation?
For understandable reasons, inflammation tends to carry a negative connotation as something painful or uncomfortable --- a signifier of poor health, a precursor to illness. But the truth of inflammation is that it’s an important part of the body’s response to infection.
To be more specific, inflammation refers to the process by which your white blood cells and antibodies work to heal a wound or defend your body from external threats like bacteria, viruses, etc. In simple terms, this type of acute inflammation that responds to an immediate threat is a useful and necessary immune response.
However, chronic inflammation can be incredibly disruptive. Inflammatory conditions including arthritis, asthma, diabetes, heart disease, fibromyalgia, and celiac disease can lead to inflammation that isn’t actually fighting off a foreign invader. This ongoing inflammation can do damage over time and can lead to bodily pain, frequent infections, gastrointestinal issues, chronic fatigue, insomnia, depression, anxiety, and other physical and mental health disorders.
How sleep affects inflammation and vice versa
During sleep, the immune system releases something called cytokines, which are protective proteins that serve a variety of functions, including facilitating the body’s inflammatory response to illness and injury. Interestingly, this nighttime inflammation activity actually strengthens the immune system, preparing the body to fight off infections and heal injuries.
Conversely, a common symptom of inflammation, especially chronic inflammation, is fatigue. This fatigue is related to pain and depression in people who experience chronic inflammation, and it’s possible that the fatigue is actually caused by pain disrupting sleep, thus creating an ongoing cycle of inflammation. In some instances, decreasing inflammation in people with chronic inflammation has actually reversed pain and fatigue symptoms.
Sleep loss and inflammation
The connection between sleep loss and inflammation is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, because each one can affect the other.
Sleep deprivation can diminish the production of the cytokines released during sleep, and it can also reduce the number of infection-fighting cells and antibodies. In general, sleep is necessary for your immune system to fight off infection, so poor sleep can lead to higher levels of inflammation in the body.
People with irregular sleep schedules are more likely to experience chronic inflammation than people with consistent sleep schedules, and for that reason, sleep disorders are considered a risk factor for chronic inflammation. In fact, even short term sleep loss --- like staying up late to finish a project or having a night out --- can affect the body’s inflammatory homeostasis.
This disruption of the body’s inflammatory process affects the immune system, of course, and it also affects other processes like blood pressure, metabolism, and sleep itself. What this means is that disrupting your body’s inflammatory response by missing sleep can snowball into ongoing sleep issues, thus further disrupting the inflammatory response, and so on.
Can better sleep improve inflammatory conditions?
If you’re experiencing chronic inflammation or a specific inflammatory condition, you might be wondering whether improved sleep could alleviate your condition. In general, everyone should aim for a regular, healthy sleep schedule, but that’s especially important for people with health concerns like autoimmune disorders and inflammatory conditions.
Here are more details on sleep’s effect on some specific and common inflammatory conditions:
Asthma
Research demonstrates that getting less sleep can make asthma worse. Sleep loss promotes inflammation in the body, which affects the lungs, so getting quality sleep is important for managing asthma.
However, asthma itself as well as asthma medications can disrupt sleep, so reducing bedroom allergens, keeping asthma mediation near the bed, and employing other sleep-promoting tactics can help you get better sleep and alleviate inflammation that leads to asthma attacks.
Diabetes
Sleep loss is a risk factor for diabetes because it can increase insulin resistance and blood sugar levels. This happens because sleep deprivation can lead to increased inflammation, which can impact glucose and insulin resistance.
Once again, this can be cyclical, as too high and too low blood sugar --- both of which are associated with diabetes --- can impact sleep quality. Getting better sleep can help with blood sugar regulation, which can then reduce inflammation and help with diabetes management.
Inflammatory bowel disease
The connection between sleep and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which includes Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, is complicated and not fully understood. Studies demonstrate that people with IBD tend to experience greater sleep disturbances, and while it’s unclear whether getting more sleep can specifically help with IBD, doing what you can to get seven to nine hours a night of quality sleep can’t hurt.
Rheumatoid arthritis
Insufficient sleep, which increases stress hormones and inflammation, can lead directly to rheumatoid arthritis (RA) flares. Beyond that, a lack of sleep can actually make it more difficult to deal with pain from flare-ups, meaning you’ll perceive the event as more severe.
Unfortunately, the pain from flares and some common RA medicines can both interfere with sleep. Getting better sleep could reduce the severity and frequency of your flare-ups, so it’s a good idea to take a look at your sleep hygiene and talk to your doctor if you’re experiencing sleep interruptions.
Can too much sleep trigger inflammation?
While too little sleep tends to raise concern, people don’t fret as much about getting too much sleep --- but this is possible and is also not healthy.
Surprisingly, oversleeping is linked to some of the same health conditions as sleep deprivation, including heart disease and diabetes. Hypersomnia and extreme daytime sleepiness can actually indicate other health issues like obstructive sleep apnea, narcolepsy, depression, or drug or alcohol abuse. It’s actually unclear whether oversleeping causes health issues or is a symptom of them, but research does demonstrate a link between long sleep duration and systemic inflammation.
How to improve your sleep
If you’re dealing with chronic inflammation and you’re not getting seven to nine hours of quality slumber each night, you should think about how you can prioritize getting better sleep. While sleep disturbances can be difficult to pinpoint and even more difficult to address, the following are suggestions for simple lifestyle changes that can set you up to sleep more soundly.
Monitor your health
When it comes to your health, it’s essential to be as informed as possible. A variety of health factors play into both sleep and inflammation, so if you’re experiencing problems with either, then looking into your hormone and nutrient levels can help you understand what exactly is going on and how to address it.
That’s the value of a service like Base: it offers at-home testing that allows you to monitor your hormone and nutrient levels over time so you can stay on track toward your health goals. This is helpful because symptoms related to sleep loss and inflammation can be difficult to diagnose, and therefore difficult to address, without actual health data.
Try meditation
There are a lot of reasons to add meditation to your life. Not only can it help reduce stress and improve sleep, but research also demonstrates that it might help reduce inflammation in the body. Even short sessions can have a positive impact, and there are plenty of apps and online resources that can help you get started.
Practice good sleep hygiene
Any change you make to improve your sleep hygiene is a change worth making. Sleep hygiene simply refers to healthy sleep-related habits and includes a wide range of behaviors both at bedtime and before. Here are a few to consider:
- Keep screens out of the bedroom. It can be tempting to watch TV or scroll on your phone until you fall asleep, but the blue light from screens can inhibit melatonin production and disrupt sleep. Ideally, put screens away at least 30 minutes before bed.
- Cut down on caffeine and alcohol. Both of these substances can interfere with your sleep quality and quantity, and can also lead to increased inflammation.
- Stick to a schedule. This can be challenging, but the closer you can stick to a consistent sleep/wake schedule --- even on weekends --- the better your body will be able to establish a healthy circadian rhythm.
- Get exercise. This one is pretty self-explanatory, but there are a couple of caveats. First, don’t exercise too close to bedtime, as that might actually interfere with sleep. Second, don’t overdo it on intensity or duration, as that can actually make inflammation worse.
If you’re unsure where to start, consider Base’s Sleep Lab Test to get suggestions tailored to your specific health needs. Keep in mind: no adjustment is too small when it comes to sleep hygiene. Whatever steps you can take toward improving your sleep quality will be well worth it in the long run.
Struggling to get a good night’s sleep?
Take our quiz to build a bespoke testing plan that will help yousleep more soundly.
