Research

Hormonal

Sleep deprivation and reduced sleep duration weaken the immune response, increasing susceptibility to viral, bacterial, and parasitic infections through mechanisms such as impaired lymphocyte proliferation and altered cytokine levels.

Prioritize adequate sleep duration and quality as a primary defense against infection. Sleep deprivation directly impairs immune cell function (lymphocytes, NK cells) and cytokine signaling, making you more susceptible to colds and other infections. Treat sleep with the same importance as nutrition and training.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
a lack of sleep can weaken immunity, increasing organism susceptibility to infection. For instance, shorter sleep durations are associated with a rise in suffering from the common cold.
Elizabeth Ibarra‐Coronado et al. · Journal of Immunology Research · 2015

Why this rating

The paper is a review citing multiple human and animal studies, providing strong mechanistic evidence, though it lacks a single definitive clinical trial on sleep duration and infection rates in healthy adults.

Source

The Bidirectional Relationship between Sleep and Immunity against Infections

Elizabeth Ibarra‐Coronado et al. · Journal of Immunology Research · 2015

DOI 10.1155/2015/678164

narrative_reviewCited 234×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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