By now, I think everyone knows that getting a good night’s sleep is essential to a person’s good health. We all know that sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture, and that times in our lives – like during the first few weeks of becoming parents – when we get little sleep are especially hard.

You might not know, though, how fast loosing sleep can catch up with you.

And according to this new study, it can be as short as a single night.

Previous research has linked disrupted sleep to chronic conditions like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, and have also found it degrades our immune system’s ability to function.

Monocytes are a principal component of the body’s innate immune system, and the new research looks at how sleep quality influences their ability to respond to pathogens it might encounter.

There are three subsets of monocytes, known as classical, intermediate, and non-classical. Classical monocytes involve immune surveillance, intermediate handle immune activation and inflammation, and non-classical sense and respond to inflammatory cues.

The team enlisted 237 healthy adults with varying BMI numbers and took blood samples to establish their base monocyte levels and other inflammatory markers. They tracked their dietary intake, physical activity, and sleep patterns using a wearable accelerometer.

People classified as obese had significantly lower sleep quality and higher chronic low-grade inflammation, and non-classical monocytes were increased in those individuals as well. Their analysis suggests that sleep disruption independently contributes to inflammation, regardless of a person’s BMI.

They also conducted sleep deprivation experiments with five healthy participants with a lower BMI. They went 24 hours without sleep and, at the end of that day, experiments increases in nonclassical monocyte expression.

“This study highlights the importance of sleep quality in regulating immune responses and inflammation in obesity, suggesting that improving sleep quality could reduce inflammation and improve health outcomes.”

They hope that, in the future, people will come up with interventions to help ease the effects sleep deprivation is having on society.

“Ultimately, this could help mitigate the burden of inflammatory diseases like obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.”

That would be a win for individuals as well as an over-burdened healthcare system.

For now, nothing is stopping you from working toward a better night’s sleep on your own. Create a wind-down routine, leave your screens in another room, and make sure your room is dark for your best shot at some serious shut-eye.

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