Fewer Than Six Hours of Sleep Cuts Immune Response to Vaccines, Study Says

Regular readers of this space know of my great interest in sleep.  Not only do I enjoy getting a good night’s sleep but I’ve studied its effects from both the perspective of a frequent traveler as well as a Covid researcher.
We know that, when you are jet lagged, your body still sees the time as the 2 a.m. New York time, when you should be fast asleep, not having a breakfast meeting, in one example. The time change influences the rest of the day and, although your body will try to acclimate, you may find yourself on a morning run when you really should be in bed.
It also causes headaches, a loss of appetite, and mild irritability, all things better left behind when on a trip.
I myself use the app Sleep Cycle to monitor my sleep and help me wake up.
The Sleep Cycle app works by using your iPhone to detect movements as you sleep. It’ll then use this data to wake you at the optimal time in your so-called “wake up phase” which I set to be 30 minutes long.
Now we are learning that how long you sleep can impact the efficacy of your Covid vaccine.
A new study published this week in “Current Biology” shows that sleeping for less than six hours per night reduces the immune response to vaccination and this is particularly significant in younger men.
The researchers found that the reduction in efficacy is comparable to the waning of Covid-19 antibodies two months after vaccination.
Dr Karine Spiegel of Inserm, or Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale, in Lyon, France, and her colleagues combined and reanalyzed the results of seven studies that involved vaccinating people against influenza and hepatitis A and B, which are all caused by viruses. They then compared the antibody responses of individuals who slept for seven to nine hours per night (the recommended level for healthy adults) and those who slept for less than six hours per night.
The researchers found strong evidence that sleeping for less than six hours reduces the immune response to vaccination in men.  Notably, the effect was more variable in women, probably due to fluctuating sex hormone levels.
My own sleep goal is 8 hours and 15 minutes per night, a figure that varies between 8 hours and 8 hours 30 minutes based on what time Sleep Cycle decides to wake me up.  Regardless, other research shows that people who regularly get less than 7 hours of sleep per night do not function as well during the day as those who do.