SLEEP YOUR WAY TO A STRONGER IMMUNE SYSTEM
T RIC COGGINS
hat we need rest is a given. While the world’s main religions don’t all exactly agree on when it should occur, they do all call for a weekly day of rest. Originally offered as a commandment of God, in practice today all but the most devout tend to take the rest day idea as more of a suggestion, pursuing either work or play seven days a week.
Sleep, on the other hand, is not so optional. At the end of the day (pun intended), whatever our willful intentions for continued activity may be, at a certain point our brain and body “turns off” and begins a process not unlike like the night crew at a retail store… that is “restocking the shelves” for the next day’s business. One of those “shelves” in need of nightly restocking is our immune system. Dr. Michael J. Breus, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, diplomate of the American Board of Sleep Medicine, a fellow of The American Academy of Sleep, and perhaps best known as “The Sleep Doctor” on Dr. Oz, says sleep is one of the single most important factors in whether an immune system is healthy or not. In particular he notes that sleep increases both the quantity AND the effectiveness of our “killer T cells.” Cancer patients such as myself learn quickly about the importance of T cells, which are white blood cells that play a
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greenliving | May 2020
key role in the body’s immune system and its ability to hunt down and “kill” misbehaving cancer cells. Sleep deprivation equals lower T cell function. In addition, sleep even decreases the response time in which these hunter/killer cells act. It’s always better to kill cancer cells sooner than later. Along those lines, and of particular of interest during COVID-19 times, sleep has been shown to be an effective way to stimulate the immune system so as to repel viral and bacterial infections. A 2019 study conducted by the University of California at San Francisco determined that poor sleep and the resulting impact on the human immune system was the number one factor in whether someone would actually become sick after being exposed to a virus. In addition, there exists historic study data that suggests that if one did not sleep well the night before a flu shot, that the effectiveness of receiving a flu shot is drastically reduced. Concern in medical circles exists that even if a COVID-19 vaccine is developed, that a lack of sleep will minimize its effectiveness. I am not a big fan of all of the vaccines in the marketplace anyway, but the point still remains that even the vaccine industry sees the lack of sleep as a problem for their products’ desired effectiveness. Ok, so we get it, we need sleep… but what is optimum sleep and how do we achieve it? To sleep well, we need to shut the brain down and move to what’s called the parasympathetic. The parasympathetic nervous system controls our overall body homeostasis and our bodily functions at rest. In other words, greenlivingaz.com
