Why Tossing And Turning At Night Make You More Vulnerable To Colds, Flu And Other Infections

There’s nothing worse than being laid up with flu or a bad cold or a terrible stomach bug, stuffed up nose, sore throat, lethargy and looking dreadful – or just feeling like the pits and fed up with the sight of the loo. And doesn’t it always happen when you are busy at work or you have a big social event or hot date coming up?

So what can we do to help ourselves when all around are busy sneezing, coughing or groaning. Obviously boosting our immune system is a good idea so our bodies are primed to fight off the bacteria and viruses as they lay in wait to invade.

But did you know something as simple as getting a good night’s sleep is one of the most important things to help do this? 

Most people know that our bodies recover overnight from the stresses and strains of daily living while we sleep, for instance our blood vessels dilate and all the blood that is stored in our organs during the day moves into our muscles to nourish and repair them. But more specifically, if you think about it, when we’re sick we sleep much more – that’s because our immune system is also activated while we are in deep sleep to fight the illness. It’s also very common for people who do a lot of long distance travel across time zones to also get sick very quickly.  This is normally blamed on jet lag but jet lag happens because of the body’s natural body temperature rhythm being out of alignment. Jet lag commonly creates a disruption of deep sleep and added to the stress of travel, this is a perfect mixture for lowering one’s immune system.

Recent reearch¹ from Sealy, the world’s biggest bed company, has shown that currently 50% of us are only getting one proper, undisturbed night’s sleep a week, which is alarming news when put into the context of how our immune systems are affected by lack of sleep.

So if you want to avoid getting too many coughs and colds – the first thing you need to do is ensure you are getting a good, restful, deep night’s sleep without disturbance.

¹ Sealy Sleep Research from Heawood Research Ltd – data on file