Immune Function Talk

There is clear research-based evidence that getting enough quality sleep is absolutely essential for maintaining optimally functioning immune system. For example, lack of sleep disrupts the production and release of cytokines, which weakens your immune system's ability to defend against foreign invaders. As you might know, cytokines, are a type of proteins that help your immune system to function properly, as they help regulate inflammation, cell signaling, and immune responses.

3 Ways to Promote Optimal Production of Cytokines

1. Get enough sleep — to allow your body time to produce more cytokines, such as interleukins (IL-1 & IL-6), and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α), which are fundamental for strengthening your immune system's ability to keep you safe.

2. Maintain regular sleep rhythm — the more regular sleep routine you follow, the better your body can produce and release cytokines. Just one poorly slept night is enough to affect the system. The reason is rooted in the fact that cytokine production follows your bio-mechanical clock. Therefore, regular sleep patterns are good for your immune system.

3. Get quality sleep — the calmer your sleep, the lower the levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines. This is another important fact. If you lack quality sleep, this triggers an internal alarm, and as a result your body systems start to increase the levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as interleukin-8 (IL-8), which is known to damage healthy cells and tissues in your body. This contributes to developing chronic inflammatory diseases.

How to Get Better Sleep?

One of keys to get better sleep is to learn ways to reduce neurological stress. This you can do with therapeutic movements, which have a sleep-inducing quality. These are very gentle, small and slow therapeutic movements that have the power to promote calming processes in the body-brain system. This is a discovery I made a few years ago, when I studied neuroscience-based movement learning. Not only can you learn to fall asleep more easily, also your sleep quality can improve. To learn more about how to improve your sleep quality, here a link to my free course at Udemy,

Hope this is useful!

Oliver