It seems COVID-19 is creating havoc with some victims’ sleep patterns. “COVID-somnia,” the British Sleep Society began calling it last summer. Is it inflammation? Is it nerve damage associated with “brain fog”? Whatever it is, radiologists and neurologists do not see post-COVID-19 encephalomyelitis as irreversible, but it could be related to “myalgic encephalomyelitis, sometimes called chronic fatigue syndrome,” writes James Hamblin for The Atlantic.
Get adequate sleep is a recommendation to add to wearing masks, social distancing, and frequently washing hands as a way of fending off the virus in the first place:
Sleep is sometimes likened to a sort of anti-inflammatory cleansing process; it removes waste products that accumulate during a day of firing. Without sleep, those by-products accumulate and impair communication (just as seems to be happening in some people with post-COVID-19 encephalomyelitis). “In the early stages of COVID-19, you feel extremely tired,” says Michelle Miller, a sleep-medicine professor at the University of Warwick in the U.K. Essentially, your body is telling you it needs sleep. But as the infection goes on, Miller explains, people find that they often can’t sleep, and the problems with communication compound one another.
Russel Reiter, a cell-biology professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, recommends melatonin as a standard treatment for COVID patients. But Asim Shah, a psychiatry and behavioral-sciences professor at Baylor College of Medicine, recommends a more behavioral, less medicinal approach:
The general recommendation is that getting your body’s melatonin cycles to work regularly is preferable to simply taking a supplement and continuing to binge Netflix and stare at your phone in bed. Now that so many people’s days lack structure, Shah believes a key to healthy pandemic sleep is to deliberately build routines. On weekends, wake up and go to bed at the same time as you do other days. Take scheduled walks. Get sunlight early in the day. Reduce blue light for an hour before bed. Stay connected with other people in meaningful ways, despite being physically distant.
Even small daily rituals can help, says Tricia Hersey, the founder of a nap-advocacy organization called the Nap Ministry. Light a candle. Have a cup of tea in a specific place at a certain time. “Repetitive rituals are part of what makes us human and ground ourselves,” she told me. They’re also perhaps the most attainable intervention there is. Wherever you are, Hersey says, “you can daydream. You can slow down. You can find small ways to stop and remember who you are.”
Here in this … fortress of solitude … the morning posts provide routine. A daily 4-mile walk afterwards provides the exercise and sunlight. Breaking news late in the evening makes getting enough sleep trickier. But an afternoon nap with the cat makes up the difference. COVID-free so far.
Hamblin concludes, “Draw boundaries for yourself, and sleep like your life depends on it. Hopefully it won’t.”
Does it help? It couldn’t hoit!
It’s Happy Hollandaise time here at Hullabaloo. If you’d like to drop a little something in the old Christmas stocking you can do so here: