3/13/2023 0 Comments Covid insomnia![]() ![]() When you start to feel better, aim to go back to your regular, pre-COVID, sleep-wake pattern, and avoid daytime napping, or at least too much daytime napping. Try not to get too frustrated about sleeping poorly or taking longer to fall asleep. How to deal with sleep disruptions caused by COVID During the acute phase of infections, it's important to accept we may experience some sleep disturbances. Much more research is needed to fully understand the causes of poorer sleep with COVID. Unfortunately, more research is needed to determine why some people experience lingering fatigue after viral infections, but it may be due to an excessive immune response.įactors such as genetics, other health concerns and mood disorders such as anxiety are the likely culprits as to why some people experience "COVID insomnia", whereas others are more likely to develop "long COVID". On the other side, there are people who experience long COVID, where they are constantly fatigued even though they may be getting sufficient sleep well after their COVID infection has passed. However, if poor sleep habits persist this can lead to chronic insomnia. In the short-term, these insomnia symptoms are not really a big issue. And taking longer to fall asleep, or waking up at night and struggling to fall back asleep can lead to frustrations around not being able to sleep.Īll of these factors, either independently or in combination with each other, may lead to the insomnia symptoms people with COVID are experiencing. Poorer night time sleep may also lead to some people having more frequent daytime naps, which could further impact night time sleep. ![]() People also reported increased difficulties falling asleep, poorer sleep quality, more restless sleep and more "lighter" sleep.Ī more recent study found patients with COVID reported more trouble sleeping compared to patients without COVID.ĬOVID insomnia and long COVID While the changes in sleep with viral infections such as COVID are likely to be due to our bodies' immune response, it's possible the sleep disturbances, such as the fragmented sleep and waking frequently, may lead to poor sleep habits, such as using phones or electronic devices at night. ![]() Sleep and COVID While we are still learning about the specific effects of COVID on sleep, we do know about what happens to sleep with other viral infections.Īnother study that looked at people with respiratory infections showed that while symptomatic, people spent more time in bed and had increased sleep time, yet had more awakenings during sleep. As such, sleep increases the immune response which may increase our chance of survival from the infection. ![]() During sleep, especially during the non-rapid eye movement stage slow wave sleep (a deep stage of sleep), there is an increase in the production of some cytokines. This means sleep, in particular poor sleep, can impact immune function, and immune function can impact sleep. It gets a little more complicated though, because like many things, sleep and immunity are bidirectional. In this way, when there are more of these cytokines in our bodies this tends to make us sleepier. Some of these cytokines are also involved in promoting sleep and are known as "sleep regulatory substances". As part of this response, our cells produce proteins such as cytokines in order to help fight the infection. Sleep and immunity When our body is infected with a virus this causes an immune, or inflammatory response. ![]()
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