COVID-19 risk: Why it matters to get enough sleep
Nearly a third of Ohioans don’t get enough sleep.
While sleep can often take a back seat to everyday life, it is essential to keep immune systems functioning at peak capacity to ward off illnesses like COVID-19, said Nicole Blevens, Sleep Disorders Center clinical manager at Wooster Community Hospital.
Wayne and Holmes counties are two of the 34 counties in the Buckeye State where between 38% and 48% of the population receive less than the seven to eight hours of recommended sleep, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Ashland County is one of the 41 Ohio counties where between 35% and 38% of the population sleep less than seven hours.
With so many Ohioans not sleeping enough, nearly a third of the state’s population might have weakened immune systems making them more susceptible to the new coronavirus.
“When you have an untreated sleep disorder or have really poor sleep times, you’re going to be more susceptible to things like COVID-19,” Blevens said.
She added that poor sleep increases the risks of health-related complications like heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and depression.
With delta variant coronavirus cases increasing throughout the state, Blevens said one way to stay healthy is to get eight hours of quality sleep. Sleep apnea and COVID-19 A common disorder that afflicts nearly 1 in 15 Americans is sleep apnea and can severely reduce an individual’s quality of sleep, which means 1 in 15
Americans are more at risk of having a weakened immune system.
Sleep apnea is caused by the soft tissue of the mouth and throat closing airway access to the lungs, making it difficult to breathe when asleep.
“Nearly 80% of those with sleep apnea remain undiagnosed,” Blevens said. “Even if you rest for more than seven to eight hours with sleep apnea, you can still have poor quality of sleep.”
If someone has between 5 and 30 or more instances of airway obstruction in an hour of sleep, they might be diagnosed with sleep apnea, according to John Hopkins Medicine.
Sleep apnea often affects overweight individuals and the elderly the most.
A 2020 study published by the American Thoracic Society studied the effects of sleep apnea on 4,668 patients diagnosed with coronavirus, of which 7.4% or 31 died.
Of the 4,668 patients, 443 were diagnosed with sleep apnea who had an increased all-cause mortality rate of 11.7% compared with the sleep apnea controls at 6.9%.
While the results seem to point toward some association between COVID-19 morbidity rates and sleep apnea, the CDC states that old age, obesity, hypertension and diabetes increase poor health outcomes in COVID-19 patients, Blevens said.
“When you stop breathing in your sleep, your oxygen levels are already compromised, and then you add COVID-19 on top of it, which further compromises your oxygen levels,” she said. “Your system is more susceptible and might be compromised, so you’re at higher risk.”
While sleep apnea could increase the severity of COVID-19, she said that it would need to be further studied to better understand a possible link between severe cases and sleeping disorders.
Who gets the least amount of sleep?
According to the CDC, students, shift workers and people of color disproportionately get the least amount of sleep.
“As you go into your teenager years and you hit puberty, your circadian rhythm shifts so that you have a delayed sleep phase, so what that means is you don’t physically get tired until later into the evening,” Blevens said.
The circadian rhythm, the body’s natural sleep cycle, changes with age, so the delay teenagers experience can push bedtimes back by two or three hours.
This means they might need to sleep until 8 a.m. or 9 a.m., she said.
“The problem is school times for high schools are a lot earlier than your elementary-aged kids, but this should be reversed,” she said. “There’s a lot of pushback to changing school start times for high schoolers so it matches with their circadian rhythm because then you push sports, after-school jobs and things like that later.”
In 2013, the CDC reported that nearly 70% of high school students received less than eight hours of sleep and that up to 3% more Black and 9% more Asian students get less sleep than their white counterparts.
For Blevens, this disparity could result from the lack of well-paying jobs, nutritious foods, poor education and access to health care.
“If there is a disproportion in our community, it’s probably with opportunities available for educational advancement, if you’re having to work multiple jobs or shift work and if your income is lower your diet might be worse and so is your access to health care,” she said.
Shift work and artificial light disturbances
While school start times limit teenagers’ natural sleep patterns, shift work varies from the early morning hours to the late hours of the night.
Employees who work different shifts are more likely to get much less sleep and poorer quality of sleep than the average 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. workers.
Blevens said her patients who do shift work often take two or three fourhour naps in a day, which doesn’t allow the body to properly rest.
“Our brain triggers our sleep time based on light receptors in our eyes, so when you work a night shift, you’re going against your natural biology and trying to shift your sleep cycle to be awake,” she said.
Artificial light disrupts the circadian rhythm by preventing the body from producing melatonin.
To combat this on computers and smartphones, blue light filters are now options on many devices to change the colors on a screen, Blevens said.
Instead of a white, bright display, the filter softens colors to warmer oranges and reds.
While this can help improve sleep quality, Blevens said, habits can make the most difference.
“What we’re eating and how much exercise we get,” she explained. “We should, ideally, not eat heavy meals before bed and should put down our screens at least an hour before sleep.”
Reach Bryce by email at bbuyakie@gannett.com
On Twitter: @Bryce_buyakie