Missing a night’s sleep has the same effect on the immune system as experiencing physical stress, a new study from the Netherlands finds. In the study, published in the journal Sleep, men who were kept continually awake for 29 hours showed an increase in levels of white blood cells called granulocytes. And while levels of these white blood cells usually go through vary throughout a normal day, this rhythm was lost during sleep deprivation. The researchers compared the white
...moreMissing a night’s sleep has the same effect on the immune system as experiencing physical stress, a new study from the Netherlands finds. In the study, published in the journal Sleep, men who were kept continually awake for 29 hours showed an increase in levels of white blood cells called granulocytes. And while levels of these white blood cells usually go through vary throughout a normal day, this rhythm was lost during sleep deprivation. The researchers compared the white blood cell counts of 15 healthy young men under normal and severely sleep-deprived conditions. During the study, blood samples were collected every three hours for a 48-hour period. Sleep deprivation is known to be associated with the development of some diseases, but because the study was small, future research is needed to confirm the results.
