How To Sleep Before And After Taking the COVID-19 Vaccine

How To Sleep Before And After Taking the COVID-19 Vaccine

Given the current circumstances, it is ideal to discuss how sleep can impact your body's immune activity to a vaccine. This is crucial for those who are struggling to sleep at night during the pandemic. If you are looking forward to getting the vaccine then it is the right time to be getting a consistent rest and sleep to get your immune systems to read and optimise the effectiveness of the vaccine.

How does sleep affect your immunity?
If you are lacking adequate and quality sleep then this will damage your body's immune system to function to the greatest of its ability. To have a strong and sturdy immune system, you must be getting a healthy amount of sleep and maintaining your circadian rhythms.

The immune system is determined by sleep as well as your circadian rhythm, thereby directing the activity of your immune system. This includes when and how your body triggers the defence mechanism to protect your body's health and well-being against bacteria, infections, viruses and other unsafe pathogens. If your sleep cycle and circadian rhythm are affected then this will compromise the functioning of your immune system. So it's crucial to strictly follow a routine of sleeping and waking up times to maintain a more synced circadian rhythm and optimum functioning of your immune system.

Sleep can regulate the wellness of our immune system activity. This is because during deep sleep our immune system betters its defences and nightly restoration is vital for the effective functioning of your immune system. Studies demonstrate short periods of sleeping is associated with one's immunity being compromised which include:

• Weakened adaptive immunity

• Chronic and systematised inflammation

• Better susceptibility to infections

• Fast cellular ageing and decreased longevity

How does sleep affect the response to vaccines?

Natural immunity is influenced by sleep. Sleep can affect the adaptability or acquired immunity when the immune system associates itself with a threat and prepares to respond to it. Vaccines are one crucial way in which your body creates developed immunity. Although vaccines work in various ways, their ultimate goal is to help the body to recognise a particular threat, creating antibodies that are aimed to weaken the threat.

The main ways in which your sleep can affect your effectiveness of a vaccine are:

1. Antibody production

The best vaccine response produces a lot of antibodies to combat particular infections. Research illustrates that less sleep is linked with reduced antibodies being produced when getting vaccinated.

Longer periods of sleep allows more time for immune-boosting and deep slow-wave sleep, producing more antibodies in response to the vaccine. Some studies have found sleeping for longer durations are linked to a 50% boost in the production of antibodies following a vaccine.

2. Effectiveness of sleep before and after getting a vaccine

It's vital to get plentiful of sleep before and after getting a vaccine, as the effectiveness of the vaccine can be optimised.

A study carried out in 2020 represents that the quantity of sleep received by patients before getting a flu vaccine was associated with the effect of antibodies for some time later.

Research has also shown that sleep deprivation after getting vaccinated decreases the production of antibodies.

The research interlinking vaccination response and sleep imply that adequate sleep before and after getting a vaccine helps assist with the body's ability to fight against and respond to viruses.

3. Duration of sleep optimises the response to a vaccine

Duration of sleep is found to be key in the majority of research which correlates better sleep to strong vaccination responses. Not only is the quantity of sleep important, but the quality of sleep is also just as important. For most adults, at least 7 hours of sleep at night allows decent restorative sleep for your immune system response to vaccines

4. Effectiveness can be affected by stress and impact your sleep

Each activity carried out by yourself can help to calm your body and mind, decrease stress and reinforce your social relationships, improving your body's accommodative response to getting the COVID-19 vaccine. This will intensify the protection against the vaccine as well as promote better sleep.

Taking simple steps daily to better the quantity and quality of your sleep can greatly impact the functionality of your body to protect itself from infections, other pathogens and viruses including COVID.