Sleep XIII
Sleep fights infection and sickness by deploying all manner of weaponry within your immune arsenal. When you do fall ill, the immune system actively stimulates the sleep system, demanding more bed rest to help reinforce the war effort.
Less sleep and less of that magic!
My mother has been telling me that my immunity is dropping in the last couple of weeks. This might be true - because I have been falling sick too often and too easily. The weather in Bangalore has been a bit crazy off-late, but i should be stronger than that - especially with all the yoga I do and the nutritious food i eat, I also sleep 8 hours at least in the night, with an hour (or to) of afternoon naps thrown in on holidays and weekends. So i need to dig deeper about my weakened immunity. But one thing is for certain - it's definitely not because of lack of sleep. How does sleep affect immunity? Now, if you have been on this sleep journey with me - you should know better than that!
A couple of weeks back I fell terribly sick and all I wanted to do (and I did) was get into my blanket and sleep - for hours together. I knew why ~ an intimate and bidirectional association exists between your sleep and your immune system.
I won't describe the whole experiment, but in short, a group of researchers collected consent from participants to infect them with a flu virus and then divided them into groups that had slept > 5 hours, 5-6 hours, 6-7 hours and 7+ hours the week before the introduction of the virus. They went onto monitor their temperature, blood, saliva and nasal mucus to check the progress of the infection! At this point I don't even need to spell out the results - those who did not sleep enough the week before they were exposed to the virus had a greater chance of catching the infection, with those sleeping 5 hours of less showing a 50% chance of catching the cold and in those sleeping 7+ hours, there was only 18% rate of infection.
Similar results were seen in people who got flu shots that helped in developing anti-bodies to infection. Those who had slept well for a week before being administered the fly shot had a much higher rate of anti-body response, reflecting a robust immune system. What if the folks who slept less were given sleep recovery time? Even if the individual were allowed 2-3 weeks of sleep recovery, they never go on to develop a full immune reaction to the fly shot. If you miss out on the moment, you can't make up for it.
How many nights of improper sleep weakens the system? The scary topic of cancer is introduced now. Natural killer cells are an elite and powerful squadron within the ranks of your immune system which help eliminate foreign elements, one such element being malignant tumour cells. The killer cells weaken the outer surface of the cancerous cells and inject a protein that can destroy the malignancy.
In an experiment conducted by Dr Michael Irwin, it was discovered that a single night of 4 hours of sleep swept away 70% of the natural killer cells circulating in the immune system relative to a night of 8 hours of sleep.
Nighttime shift work and a disruption of the natural circadian rhythm increase the odds of developing numerous different forms of cancer.
The reason there is this relationship between sleep deprivation and cancer is the body functioning under a sympathetic nervous system (SNS) that is on overdrive - which provokes a sustained inflammation response in the body. A state of chronic inflammation causes many problems, including cancer. Cancer cells use the inflammatory factors for the growth of blood vessels that feed it with more nutrients and oxygen. The cells also use the inflammation to damage and mutate the DNA to increase the tumour's potency. What is scary is the inflammation can help the cancer cells uproot themselves from where they originated and move to other regions of the body - amplifying and spreading it.
In a disturbing experiment, mice were injected with tumours cells and then they were watched by dividing them into two groups - one that slept normally and one that did not. Obviously, the under-slept mice saw a faster spread of the tumour all over the body - organs, tissue and bones. Sleep deprived mice suffered a 200% increase in the speed and size of cancer growth, relative to the well rested group. There are immune cells called tumour-associated macrophages : M1 and M2. M1 helps combat cancer and M2 promoted cancer growth.. The under-slept mice had lesser of the M1 cells and more of the M2. Poor sleep quality therefore increases the risk of cancer developing and, if cancer is established, provides a virulent fertilizer for it rapid and more rampant growth.
It is a hard study to read with the mice being injected for the purpose of science and experiments, Matthew himself accepts that, but the truth it presents is also a hard one to swallow.
The last section in this long long chapter is on Genes and DNA and what sleep loss does to it. Chronic sleep loss will erode the very essence pf biological life itself : your genetic code and the structures that encapsulate it.
My mother has been telling me that my immunity is dropping in the last couple of weeks. This might be true - because I have been falling sick too often and too easily. The weather in Bangalore has been a bit crazy off-late, but i should be stronger than that - especially with all the yoga I do and the nutritious food i eat, I also sleep 8 hours at least in the night, with an hour (or to) of afternoon naps thrown in on holidays and weekends. So i need to dig deeper about my weakened immunity. But one thing is for certain - it's definitely not because of lack of sleep. How does sleep affect immunity? Now, if you have been on this sleep journey with me - you should know better than that!
A couple of weeks back I fell terribly sick and all I wanted to do (and I did) was get into my blanket and sleep - for hours together. I knew why ~ an intimate and bidirectional association exists between your sleep and your immune system.
I won't describe the whole experiment, but in short, a group of researchers collected consent from participants to infect them with a flu virus and then divided them into groups that had slept > 5 hours, 5-6 hours, 6-7 hours and 7+ hours the week before the introduction of the virus. They went onto monitor their temperature, blood, saliva and nasal mucus to check the progress of the infection! At this point I don't even need to spell out the results - those who did not sleep enough the week before they were exposed to the virus had a greater chance of catching the infection, with those sleeping 5 hours of less showing a 50% chance of catching the cold and in those sleeping 7+ hours, there was only 18% rate of infection.
Similar results were seen in people who got flu shots that helped in developing anti-bodies to infection. Those who had slept well for a week before being administered the fly shot had a much higher rate of anti-body response, reflecting a robust immune system. What if the folks who slept less were given sleep recovery time? Even if the individual were allowed 2-3 weeks of sleep recovery, they never go on to develop a full immune reaction to the fly shot. If you miss out on the moment, you can't make up for it.
How many nights of improper sleep weakens the system? The scary topic of cancer is introduced now. Natural killer cells are an elite and powerful squadron within the ranks of your immune system which help eliminate foreign elements, one such element being malignant tumour cells. The killer cells weaken the outer surface of the cancerous cells and inject a protein that can destroy the malignancy.
In an experiment conducted by Dr Michael Irwin, it was discovered that a single night of 4 hours of sleep swept away 70% of the natural killer cells circulating in the immune system relative to a night of 8 hours of sleep.
Nighttime shift work and a disruption of the natural circadian rhythm increase the odds of developing numerous different forms of cancer.
The reason there is this relationship between sleep deprivation and cancer is the body functioning under a sympathetic nervous system (SNS) that is on overdrive - which provokes a sustained inflammation response in the body. A state of chronic inflammation causes many problems, including cancer. Cancer cells use the inflammatory factors for the growth of blood vessels that feed it with more nutrients and oxygen. The cells also use the inflammation to damage and mutate the DNA to increase the tumour's potency. What is scary is the inflammation can help the cancer cells uproot themselves from where they originated and move to other regions of the body - amplifying and spreading it.
In a disturbing experiment, mice were injected with tumours cells and then they were watched by dividing them into two groups - one that slept normally and one that did not. Obviously, the under-slept mice saw a faster spread of the tumour all over the body - organs, tissue and bones. Sleep deprived mice suffered a 200% increase in the speed and size of cancer growth, relative to the well rested group. There are immune cells called tumour-associated macrophages : M1 and M2. M1 helps combat cancer and M2 promoted cancer growth.. The under-slept mice had lesser of the M1 cells and more of the M2. Poor sleep quality therefore increases the risk of cancer developing and, if cancer is established, provides a virulent fertilizer for it rapid and more rampant growth.
It is a hard study to read with the mice being injected for the purpose of science and experiments, Matthew himself accepts that, but the truth it presents is also a hard one to swallow.
The last section in this long long chapter is on Genes and DNA and what sleep loss does to it. Chronic sleep loss will erode the very essence pf biological life itself : your genetic code and the structures that encapsulate it.
DNA - deoxyribonucleic acid- molecules are the pretty looking spiral structures that hold the blueprint for all living organisms. Genes are a subdivision of the DNA that provide specific engineering blueprints that instruct your cells to perform particular functions. "When genes are activated and read by a cell, a biological product is printed out, such as the creation of an enzyme that help with digestion, or a protein that helps strengthen a memory circuit within the brain......over or under expressing particular genes can cause biological printed products that raise your risk of disease" ~ Matthew Walker.
Many genes depends on sleep for stability. When you do not provide enough sleep to them, they will not translate their instructional code into printed action and give the brain and body what they need. In an experiment, Dr Derk-jan Dijk showed that one week of sleep distorted the activity of 711 genes as compared to the individuals who were getting a full 8 hours of sleep that week ~ 50% of the genes lost their expression (stable metabolism and good immune response) and the other 50% (inflammation, cellular stress and other factors causing cardiovascular disease) went into an overdrive.
Short sleep duration will disrupt the activity of the genes regulating cholesterol ~ causing a drop in high density lipoproteins (HDL) - something that is consistently linked to cardiovascular disease.
Lack of sleep therefore affects the structure of your genetic material. The spiral strands of the DNA in your cells float around in the nucleus, but are tightly wound together into structures called chromosomes. These have a binding in the end, a protective cap called the telomere. If those get frayed, the DNA spirals becomes exposed and the genetic code can't function properly. the worse sleep an individual gets the more damaged the telemores are. Mimicing what is seen in aging and advanced decrepitude. If you;'re not sleeping well, you will look older than your biological age.
Neglect sleep, and you are deciding to perform a genetic engineering manipulation on yourself every night.
I'll leave you with that sobering thought as I bid you farewell.
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