Many of us distort our hormonal health and immunity by getting too little sleep. But researchers in France say there’s a quick way to get those hormones back on track.
Take a 30 minute nap.
About 30 percent of Americans get six or less hours of sleep a night, too little to keep the immune system functioning properly or keep hormones in proper balance. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), too little sleep can also hurt your job productivity and make you more liable to be involved in traffic accidents and industrial mishaps. It also increases your chances of high blood pressure, depression, obesity and type 2 diabetes.
“Our data suggests a 30-minute nap can reverse the hormonal impact of a night of poor sleep,” says researcher Brice Faraut, of the Université Paris Descartes-Sorbonne Paris Cité in Paris. “This is the first study that found napping could restore biomarkers of neuroendocrine and immune health to normal levels.”
In the French study, the researchers examined people who only slept for two hours a night to see how the lack of slumber influenced their hormones. They found that too little sleep more than doubled levels of norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter and stress hormone that the body uses in its fight-or-flight reaction to dangerous situations. In response to the release of norepinephrine, the heart rate skyrockets, blood pressure climbs and blood sugar goes up.
But when sleep-skimpers took a 30 minute nap, norepinephrine levels went back to normal.
Sleep deprivation also changes levels of interleukin-6, an immunity protein that helps fight off viral infections. Levels of this protein slip after a night of little sleep, but were found to return to normal after a nap. That indicates that a nap helps the immune system function optimally.
“Napping may offer a way to counter the damaging effects of sleep restriction by helping the immune and neuroendocrine systems to recover,” Faraut says. “The findings support the development of practical strategies for addressing chronically sleep-deprived populations, such as night and shift workers.”
