How Better Sleep Can Supercharge Your Immune System

Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsIllness Effect on SleepAntibodies Are ReducedImmune MemoryAffect on RecoverySleep DeprivationRisk of IllnessLong-Term RisksHow Much to Sleep?Can You Sleep Too Much?Tips to Improve Sleep

Table of ContentsView All

View All

Table of Contents

Illness Effect on Sleep

Antibodies Are Reduced

Immune Memory

Affect on Recovery

Sleep Deprivation

Risk of Illness

Long-Term Risks

How Much to Sleep?

Can You Sleep Too Much?

Tips to Improve Sleep

Sleep is beneficial for your immune system, and getting enough sleep is especially important if you have a cold or another type of infection. Sleep deprivation can even increase your risk of illness and other health problems. On average, adults need about seven to nine hours of sleep per day.

You probably already have a good idea of how much sleep you need to feel rested, alert, and in a good mood the next day. If you’re recovering from an illness or surgery, you probably need more sleep than usual so your body can heal and build up your strength again.

Sleep Phase Disruption When Sick

If an illness disrupts your sleep, you can miss out on many of the restorative effects of sleep. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to sleep—it just means that your sleep might be less efficient when you’re sick than when you are feeling well.

How Your Immune System Reacts to the Common Cold

You go through several cycles of sleep phases throughout a typical night of sleep:

Each phase has an important role, and there’s still much to be discovered about the different functions of each sleep stage. Researchers have found thatsleep architecture, which is the cycling between these different phases, is disrupted when you are sick.That means that you might not reach one or more of the deeper sleep stages, and you will probably spend a shorter time in each stage than you need.

Interrupted sleep hasthe same effects and symptoms as not getting enough sleep—it can make you irritable and cause trouble concentrating the next day. It can also make it hard to heal from injuries or surgical wounds or fight off infection.

If you feel like sleeping when you’re sick or recovering from an illness, just let yourself sleep. That will help you heal and get back to your normal self.

Infection-Fighting Antibodies Are Reduced When You Do Not Get Enough Sleep

During sleep, your body releases hormones (chemical messengers) that prompt your immune system to make antibodies that help fight infection and keep you healthy.Antibodies are immune proteins that help your body fight infectious organisms, including bacteria and viruses.

Interrupted or insufficient sleep can interfere with the body’s production of antibodies, making it difficult to fight infections.

Sleep Strengthens Immune Memory

Immunity involves a system of immune cells and proteins for healing. The fast-acting immune process of the body, called the innate immune system, is composed of white blood cells and proteins that rapidly act to destroy infectious organisms, cancer cells, or toxins in the body.

Another important component of your immune system involves your immune system’s memory, called the adaptive immune system. This is what makes youimmune to an infection that you’ve already had, and builds immunity after you’ve received a vaccination. Immunity helps your body fight off infectious bacteria or viruses before they even make you feel sick. Your immune memory cells and proteins include B cells, T cells, and antibodies.

Sleep helps optimize both your innate immune system and the memory of your immune system.

Lack of Sleep Affects Recovery Time

Recovering from illness, injury, or surgery involves coordination between the hormones and the immune system and requires an adequate supply of nutrients. Research shows that optimizing sleep during the healing stage can help speed it up and improve outcomes.

Getting enough sleep allows your body to replenish your immune cells and proteins, regulate your hormones, and absorb and use nutrients from your food.Growth hormone, which helps your body make new cells to replace those that have been injured, is produced during the REM sleep stage.

Cortisol, often described as the body’s stress hormone, can be excessively increased after a night of inadequate sleep.Cortisol suppresses your immune system and inhibits digestion and absorption of nutrients.

Every Immune System Booster: From Food to Sleep

Sleep Deprivation May Hinder Your Immune System

When you haven’t had enough sleep, your body has a number of different responses. Since sleep benefits your immune system, not having enough sleep doesn’t give your body a chance to produce adequate immune cells, antibodies, and other immune proteins.

Poor Sleep Can Increase Your Risk of Illness

Lack of sleep usually causes an excessive increase in cortisol. Cortisol suppresses the immune system, potentially making you susceptible to infections and other types of illness. Lack of sleep also affects the function of your innate immune system and your lasting immunity, making you susceptible to getting sick from an infection.

Disruption of your immune system not only predisposes you to getting an infection, it can also make you susceptible toautoimmune diseases.These are immune-mediated disorders where the body’s immune system attacks the body’s own tissues. They include illnesses such asrheumatoid arthritisandsystemic lupus erythematosus(SLE, or “lupus”).

Long-Term Lack of Sleep Can Increase Risk of Certain Conditions

Over the long term, sleep deprivation can contribute to serious medical conditions. Disruptions in hormone function, immunity, and healing can all play a role in illnesses that are associated with chronic sleep deprivation.

Lack of sleep over the long term can contribute to:

It takes a long time for these health conditions to develop. Chronic sleep disruption, along with other health issues, such as untreated hypertension, high cholesterol, and a lack of exercise, could all contribute to these progressive diseases.

Why a Good Night’s Sleep Is Important for Your Health

How Much Sleep Do You Need to Boost Your Immune System?

There’s no specific number of hours of sleep that correlates directly with optimal immune system performance, but getting enough sleep is associated with a healthy immune system. It’s generally recommended that adults sleep seven to nine hours per night.

Sleep helps your immune system through hormone regulation and regeneration of immune cells and proteins.Additionally, getting enough rest helps regulate your mood during the day, optimizing your hormone balance and immune function.

Yes, you can sleep too much. If you’re sick, it’s important that you sleep as much as you need. Get enough rest and recognize that you’ll need more sleep than usual while you’re recovering.

But sleeping too much is usually an indication that something’s wrong. For adults, too much sleep is usually defined as more than nine hours per day.

Sometimes, sleeping too much is an indication that you have an underlying physical illness or mental health problem that’s causing your body to need more sleep than usual.It’s important to see a healthcare provider about this problem. You may need to have diagnostic testing to figure out what’s going on.

Additionally, sometimes people sleep too much to avoid problems in life. This can lead to more problems—such as depression, social anxiety, obesity, and a risk of blood clots.While getting rest is indeed important, not getting enough activity can be harmful to your health—especially if you’re sleeping too much for more than just a few days while you have an infection or when you’re recovering from surgery.

If you’ve been having problems sleeping, and you’re not feeling well rested the next day, you can do some things to improve your sleep.

Some tips include:

Additionally, regular exercise may help you sleep well. It’s also recommended that you avoid heavy meals right before bed.

If lifestyle adjustments don’t help you improve your sleep, you should see a healthcare provider about your sleep.

10 Benefits of Sleep

Summary

Sleep and immunity are associated in many different ways. You need adequate sleep for your immune system to function properly. And lack of sleep can cause an increase in cortisol, a stress hormone that suppresses the immune system.

When you don’t get enough sleep, you can be more susceptible to infections and other illnesses, and it can be hard for your body to heal and recover from injuries. Additionally, chronic sleep deprivation increases the risk of major medical problems like heart disease and diabetes.

When you are sick, you will need more sleep to heal, and it can be harder to get enough rest. Trying to have a comfortable environment so you can sleep when you’re sick can help you recover faster.

6 Ways to Boost Your Immune System Naturally

8 SourcesVerywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.About sleep.da Silva FR, Guerreiro RC, Barreto AT, Brant VM, Silva A, De-Mello MT.Can improving postoperative sleep speed up surgical recovery?Sleep Sci. 2024;17(3):e335-e338. doi:10.1055/s-0044-1785522Feuth T.Interactions between sleep, inflammation, immunity and infections: a narrative review.Immun Inflamm Dis.2024;12(10):e70046. doi:10.1002/iid3.70046Vidal AS, de Campos Reis NF, De Lorenzo BHP, Alvares-Saraiva AM, Xander P, Novaes E Brito RR.Impact of sleep restriction in B-1 cells activation and differentiation.Immunobiology. 2022;227(6):152280. doi:10.1016/j.imbio.2022.152280Visallini TS, Parameswari RP.Retrospective case study on the evaluation of inflammatory markers, macrophage inhibitory protein-1α and interferon-γ in sleep deprivation condition.J Pharm Bioallied Sci. 2024;16(Suppl 2):S1326-S1329. doi:10.4103/jpbs.jpbs_607_23Lee Y, Park KI.The relationship between sleep and innate immunity.Encephalitis.2024;4(4):69-75. doi:10.47936/encephalitis.2024.00017Irwin MR.Sleep and inflammation: partners in sickness and in health.Nat Rev Immunol.2019;19(11):702-715. doi:10.1038/s41577-019-0190-zBalkin TJ, Simonelli G, Riedy S.Negative health outcomes in long sleepers: the societal sleep restriction hypothesis.Sleep Med Rev.2024;77:101968. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2024.101968

8 Sources

Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.About sleep.da Silva FR, Guerreiro RC, Barreto AT, Brant VM, Silva A, De-Mello MT.Can improving postoperative sleep speed up surgical recovery?Sleep Sci. 2024;17(3):e335-e338. doi:10.1055/s-0044-1785522Feuth T.Interactions between sleep, inflammation, immunity and infections: a narrative review.Immun Inflamm Dis.2024;12(10):e70046. doi:10.1002/iid3.70046Vidal AS, de Campos Reis NF, De Lorenzo BHP, Alvares-Saraiva AM, Xander P, Novaes E Brito RR.Impact of sleep restriction in B-1 cells activation and differentiation.Immunobiology. 2022;227(6):152280. doi:10.1016/j.imbio.2022.152280Visallini TS, Parameswari RP.Retrospective case study on the evaluation of inflammatory markers, macrophage inhibitory protein-1α and interferon-γ in sleep deprivation condition.J Pharm Bioallied Sci. 2024;16(Suppl 2):S1326-S1329. doi:10.4103/jpbs.jpbs_607_23Lee Y, Park KI.The relationship between sleep and innate immunity.Encephalitis.2024;4(4):69-75. doi:10.47936/encephalitis.2024.00017Irwin MR.Sleep and inflammation: partners in sickness and in health.Nat Rev Immunol.2019;19(11):702-715. doi:10.1038/s41577-019-0190-zBalkin TJ, Simonelli G, Riedy S.Negative health outcomes in long sleepers: the societal sleep restriction hypothesis.Sleep Med Rev.2024;77:101968. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2024.101968

Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.About sleep.da Silva FR, Guerreiro RC, Barreto AT, Brant VM, Silva A, De-Mello MT.Can improving postoperative sleep speed up surgical recovery?Sleep Sci. 2024;17(3):e335-e338. doi:10.1055/s-0044-1785522Feuth T.Interactions between sleep, inflammation, immunity and infections: a narrative review.Immun Inflamm Dis.2024;12(10):e70046. doi:10.1002/iid3.70046Vidal AS, de Campos Reis NF, De Lorenzo BHP, Alvares-Saraiva AM, Xander P, Novaes E Brito RR.Impact of sleep restriction in B-1 cells activation and differentiation.Immunobiology. 2022;227(6):152280. doi:10.1016/j.imbio.2022.152280Visallini TS, Parameswari RP.Retrospective case study on the evaluation of inflammatory markers, macrophage inhibitory protein-1α and interferon-γ in sleep deprivation condition.J Pharm Bioallied Sci. 2024;16(Suppl 2):S1326-S1329. doi:10.4103/jpbs.jpbs_607_23Lee Y, Park KI.The relationship between sleep and innate immunity.Encephalitis.2024;4(4):69-75. doi:10.47936/encephalitis.2024.00017Irwin MR.Sleep and inflammation: partners in sickness and in health.Nat Rev Immunol.2019;19(11):702-715. doi:10.1038/s41577-019-0190-zBalkin TJ, Simonelli G, Riedy S.Negative health outcomes in long sleepers: the societal sleep restriction hypothesis.Sleep Med Rev.2024;77:101968. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2024.101968

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.About sleep.

da Silva FR, Guerreiro RC, Barreto AT, Brant VM, Silva A, De-Mello MT.Can improving postoperative sleep speed up surgical recovery?Sleep Sci. 2024;17(3):e335-e338. doi:10.1055/s-0044-1785522

Feuth T.Interactions between sleep, inflammation, immunity and infections: a narrative review.Immun Inflamm Dis.2024;12(10):e70046. doi:10.1002/iid3.70046

Vidal AS, de Campos Reis NF, De Lorenzo BHP, Alvares-Saraiva AM, Xander P, Novaes E Brito RR.Impact of sleep restriction in B-1 cells activation and differentiation.Immunobiology. 2022;227(6):152280. doi:10.1016/j.imbio.2022.152280

Visallini TS, Parameswari RP.Retrospective case study on the evaluation of inflammatory markers, macrophage inhibitory protein-1α and interferon-γ in sleep deprivation condition.J Pharm Bioallied Sci. 2024;16(Suppl 2):S1326-S1329. doi:10.4103/jpbs.jpbs_607_23

Lee Y, Park KI.The relationship between sleep and innate immunity.Encephalitis.2024;4(4):69-75. doi:10.47936/encephalitis.2024.00017

Irwin MR.Sleep and inflammation: partners in sickness and in health.Nat Rev Immunol.2019;19(11):702-715. doi:10.1038/s41577-019-0190-z

Balkin TJ, Simonelli G, Riedy S.Negative health outcomes in long sleepers: the societal sleep restriction hypothesis.Sleep Med Rev.2024;77:101968. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2024.101968

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