The COVID pandemic has changed sleep in at least four different ways: quantity, quality, timing and dreaming.
[Sleeping with Science]
The first is sleep quantity. A study conducted across Europe, as well as the US and Asia, found that on average people were sleeping around 25 minutes more each night during the pandemic.
Second, there has been a change in sleep quality. Now, sleep has of course been a real challenge for many of us during the pandemic. And indeed, in the US, almost 60 percent of people felt that the quality of their sleep had become worse during the pandemic. However, 40 percent of the people didn’t feel that their sleep was any worse, so there seems to be quite a difference in the response across individuals when it comes to sleep quality and the pandemic.
The third change we’ve discovered concerns sleep timing. Since many people didn’t have to commute to work or get the kids to school in the morning, on average, people were going to bed later and waking up later during the pandemic. And I think this is a case of “Revenge of the Night Owls.” And I see it as one of the positive consequences that came out of the pandemic.
The fourth change is that people reported dreaming more and also having COVID-related dreams. And this is likely due to the fact that people were sleeping later into the morning, which is the time when we get most of our dream sleep, and the fact that dreaming helps us deal with emotional trauma.
However, there are many essential questions that still remain. One that I am particularly interested in answering is whether or not a lack of sleep before getting your COVID shot, or your COVID booster in the future, changes the effectiveness of that vaccination, just as we know it does with your annual flu shot.
What we do know for certain though is this: your sleep health is intimately related to your immune health. Said simply: sleep is a life support system.
