Bad Sleep Turns Your Immune System Against You
DNA is altered, dumping too many white blood cells into the body in what appears to be a lasting problem.
Lack of sleep is known to lower your immune defenses and lead to higher risk for all sorts of diseases in the near term and over time. New research offers some insight as to why: Sleep that’s too short or fragmented during the night actually alters the DNA inside stem cells that create your body’s white blood cells, key to the immune system.
The result is somewhat counterintuitive: The stem cells kick out too many white blood cells, flooding the body and causing an overreaction of the immune system that can trigger inflammation, which in turn can lead to heart disease and other inflammatory disorders. Catch-up sleep, already deemed of dubious value, does not seem to rectify the problem.
“The stem cells have been imprinted, or genetically altered, under the influence of sleep restriction,” said study team member Filip Swirski, PhD, director of cardiovascular research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Put another way, the creative force behind the immune system is fundamentally altered, and the system loses some of its protective effects, worsening infections.
