How sleeping well can help your body to fight disease

Sleeping well also helps the body 'remember' how to fight infections, researchers believe. Photo / iStock

A good night's rest is known to boost your memory, so you don't forget that all-important task on your to-do list.

But sleeping well also helps the body 'remember' how to fight infections, researchers believe.

They said it ensures the immune system can store features of invading germs so the body can tackle them in future.

Jan Born, of Tuebingen University in Germany, said memories and immune systems process information in similar ways - taking initial information in a short-term store then laying it down in longer-term storage as we sleep.

Writing in the journal Trends in Neurosciences, a team led by Professor Born suggested we encode such information during sleep so as not to interfere with urgent or 'acute' information processing when we are awake.

Our immune systems recall bacteria and viruses by collecting fragments of them to form 'memory T cells'.

These last months or years and help the body recognise a previous infection and react.

Researchers said the cells work in a similar way to the mind, extracting 'the gist' of the germs. We reduce the information to a vital core because the capacity of short-term memory in our brains and immune systems is limited so we focus on the essentials.

Support for the theory comes from studies that show long-term increases in the number of memory T cells following deep sleep the night after a vaccination.

An important factor is the hormone cortisol, which suppresses activity in the hippocampus - part of the brain involved in memory - and in the immune system during sleep.

Professor Born warned: 'If we didn't sleep, then the immune system might focus on the wrong parts of the pathogen.'

He hopes greater understanding of the immune system's 'memory' will aid vaccine development.

- Daily Mail