Has COVID-19 Disrupted Your Sleep? The COVID-Somnia

Sleep is crucial to health and general wellbeing. Sound sleep supports energy, healing processes, detoxification, mental health, and immune function. Sleep deprivation can impact work and relationships, impair judgment, physical and cognitive performance. Poor sleep is linked to chronic disease risk and has also been associated with increased mortality.

Sleep problems have been on the rise since the start of the pandemic. Research teams found that the pandemic lockdown led to a significant rise in the number of people suffering from sleeping problems, from one in six to one in four. Patients with active COVID-19 appeared to have higher prevalence rates of sleep problems. The main reasons are stress & fear due to financial worries, health concerns and the psychological strain of isolation, increased numbers of depression & anxiety, inactivity, prolonged time indoors (lack of daylight can disrupt the sleep-wake cycle), a rise in alcohol consumption, and in screen time ( ‘blue-light’ emitting screen can disrupt the body’s sleep cues) and COVID-19 infection. Unexplained sleep problems have also been arising in some people who have recovered from COVID-19.

Sleep and immune health are intimately connected and we know that disrupted / insufficient sleep has been linked to a heightened risk of infectious diseases. In a study published in the British Medical Journal in March 2021, researchers found that longer sleep duration was associated with lower odds of COVID-19, and greater sleep problems were robustly associated with greater odds of COVID-19.

Photocredit @ Megan te Boekhorst