Bring down your risk of COVID-19 infection by 12 per cent with just an extra hour of sleep every night

Quality and quantity of night-time sleep can have a bearing on your risk of COVID-19 infection. But daytime napping can up your risk.

Sleep is essential for maintaining overall health and lack of it can lead to many chronic ailments. But, today, many people face sleep disorders. This has become even more rampant due to the stress and anxiety induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been more than a year now since the beginning of this pandemic. Yet, we seem to be no closer to containing it. Vaccines have been developed and mass vaccination drives are being undertaken in many countries. Yet, recently, there has been a massive surge in new active cases. India too has seen a rise of more than 50,000 active cases in just 24 hours. Other than getting vaccinated, people are also resorting to innovative way of keeping safe and trying out numerous home remedies to build their immune system. Now a new study says that you can significantly bring down your chances of getting the disease by just sleeping properly and for the required number of hours. The online journal BMJ Nutrition Prevention and Health published this study.

Lack of sleep can lead to severe disease, longer recovery time

For the purpose of the study, a team of eight scientists ran a survey from July 17, 2020 to September 25, 2020. This survey was open to healthcare workers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the USA. The results of this poll revealed that factors like disrupted, or even less sleep, and daily burnout increases the risk of not only getting the COVID-19 infection, but it also increases your risk of more severe disease and a longer recovery period. According to the researchers of this survey, every one-hour increase in the amount of time spent asleep at night reduced the odds of becoming infected with COVID-19 by 12 per cent.

Disrupted sleep ups risk of viral, bacterial diseases

Insufficient or disrupted sleep and work burnout have been linked to a heightened risk of viral and bacterial infections. But the researchers say that it is not clear if these are also risk factors for COVID-19. To find out the relation between the two, the scientists drew on the responses to the online survey for healthcare workers who were repeatedly exposed to patients with COVID-19 infection.

Around 2,884 healthcare workers participated in the survey, out of which 568 workers had COVID-19. The severity of infection was categorised in five sections very mild(no or hardly any symptoms),mild (fever with or without cough, but requires no treatment), moderate (fever, respiratory symptoms and/or pneumonia), severe (breathing difficulties with low oxygen saturation) and critical (respiratory failure requiring mechanical assistance and intensive care).

Daytime napping increases risk of infection by 6 per cent

The survey saw a reported night sleep average under seven hours, but more than six. After considering the potential influential factors, the researchers found that every extra hour of sleep at night was associated with twelve per cent of lower odds of coronavirus infection. They also found that an extra hour acquired in daytime napping was associated with six percent higher odds, however this relation varies by country, mentions the report.

(With inputs from Agencies)