Sleep is one of the most powerful, yet overlooked, determinants of health. Despite its importance, 1 in 3 adults in the United States do not get enough sleep on a regular basis, and for some reason, that trend is only increasing. This has led the CDC to classify lack of sleep as a public health epidemic.
Sleep disorders are the major driver behind this problem. Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder, affecting nearly 10% of adults. Other sleep disorders, including sleep apnea, disrupt breathing throughout the night, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease and metabolic conditions. Conditions like these, when left untreated, can lead to long-term health complications.
Though sleep deprivation has long-term ramifications, it also affects your day-to-day life. During deep sleep, the brain and body repair tissues, regulate energy use, balance digestion and hunger cues, strengthen immunity, manage information, and consolidate memory. Essentially, quality sleep influences everything from how you feel today to how long you’ll live tomorrow.
If you’re getting high-quality sleep regularly, you can reduce your risk of death related to heart disease by up to 57%, and risk of all-cause mortality by up to 48%. Let that sink in. For people recovering from illness or injury, sleep becomes a determinant of just how well and how fast they’ll recover.
Sleep Deprivation Hinders Injury Recovery
When injured, sleep is when your body does the most healing. The deepest stages of sleep are when growth hormones are released, fueling tissue repair, muscle growth, and cellular regeneration. Without enough restorative sleep, the repair process slows to a crawl, extending recovery time from injury.
Research shows that sleep deprivation can lead to muscle breakdown and impaired synthesis of proteins, causing protein destruction to surpass protein repair. That means your body is burning through its resources instead of rebuilding them, doing more harm than good. Beyond injury repair, missing sleep also impairs strength, reaction time, and coordination. In a physical therapy setting, where patients are relearning how to move, walk, or rebuild strength after an illness or injury, these impairments can increase the risk of falls or setbacks.
For patients undergoing rehabilitation, this means poor or irregular sleep can directly stall progress in therapy or prolong the overall recovery timeline. Studies also show that sleep disruption alters hormone levels, including cortisol, which can interfere with wound healing and prolong inflammation.
Insomnia Triggers Inflammation
Sleep deprivation increases the body’s production of cortisol, your main stress hormone. This indicates to your body that something is wrong and needs to be repaired. It’s a defense mechanism, but once inflammation becomes chronic, it turns this helpful response into a harmful one, increasing your risk of conditions like heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and even depression. For patients recovering from illness or injury, these conditions can slow recovery, making it more painful and complicated.
Research shows that sleep deprivation increases the marker for systemic inflammation, called C-reactive protein. This matters because it’s not only a driver of chronic disease, but also a barrier to healing. Comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, or obesity are not uncommon in rehab patients, but when sleep is disrupted on top of these conditions, inflammation can intensify. This can worsen pain, delay wound healing, and decrease the effectiveness of rehabilitation therapies.
On the other hand, reestablishing sleep regularity and optimal sleep duration has the potential to bring inflammation back under control. Research suggests that addressing sleep disorders reduces inflammatory markers in the blood. Because immunity and inflammation are so closely connected, reducing inflammation also strengthens the immune system, the body’s defense against infection.
Sleep’s Effect on Immunity
A strong immune system is necessary for fighting infections, recovering from injury or surgery, and staying generally healthy. When you’re getting adequate, regular, high-quality sleep, your body produces more infection-fighting cells and proteins, like cytokines, killer T cells, and antibodies, which help you resist illness and recover more effectively.
Our bodies know this, which is why when you’re sick, your body releases more messengers that tell your body that you need rest, which actually helps you get more of that deep, restorative type of sleep. This helps your body conserve energy so resources can be directed toward healing.
Even short-term sleep loss can throw this system out of balance. Research shows that a single night of sleep deprivation can reduce the function of natural killer cells, a type of immune cell, by up to 70%, leaving the body vulnerable to infection because these cells can no longer do their job.
For patients in rehabilitation, a weakened immune system can increase the risk of infection after surgery, slow wound healing, and make the body less responsive to the therapies that are designed to rebuild strength and function. Critically ill patients are the most vulnerable, since the stress of an infection or illness is already heavily taxing the immune system.
How to Boost Your Wellness and Recovery
Large population studies show a U-shaped relationship between sleep and mortality. Adults who sleep fewer than 7 hours and more than 9 hours consistently face a higher risk of early death due to heart disease, strokes, diabetes, obesity, and even certain cancers.
This connection is partly due to the way sleep influences the body’s core regulatory systems. Poor or fragmented sleep disrupts hormone balance, increases inflammation, alters metabolism, and impairs cardiovascular function, all of which raise the risk of chronic disease and shorten lifespan. High-quality sleep allows the body to execute tissue repair, regulate blood pressure, maintain a healthy metabolism, and protect brain function well into old age.
So, what can you do to decrease your disease risk and recover from injury or illness faster?
Keep a regular schedule by going to bed and waking up at the same time every day, which will help set your body’s internal clock.
Create a calming bedtime routine to help your body wind down in preparation for sleep.
Optimize your sleep environment so you can get more deep sleep. This means your bedroom should be cool, dark, and quiet.
Stop using technology or anything with blue light at least an hour before bed to improve melatonin levels, which affect your sleep.
Skip the coffee or the alcohol after 4 pm since they can raise your heart rate and diminish the amount of deep sleep you get.
Don’t eat a heavy meal close to bedtime, as this will reduce the activity of your digestive system so your body can focus on devoting energy to repairing your tissues.
Stay active during the day for deeper and more restorative sleep.
Speak with a healthcare provider if you haven’t been sleeping well, because sleep disorders can easily go undiagnosed, affecting your health and longevity.
Sleep is the foundation of wellness and recovery. Don’t neglect it, and your body will thank you.
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