Cancer Danger In Your Bed

If you make this nighttime mistake when you go to bed, you’re making your body more vulnerable to cancer.

A study at the University of Chicago and the University of Louisville shows that “fragmented sleep,” going to bed at different times, skimping on sleep and frequently getting up during the night, hampers your immune system’s ability to kill cancer cells. Under these circumstances, the laboratory research demonstrates, cancer growth can speed up and tumors become more aggressive.

“(Our) study offers biological plausibility to the epidemiological associations between perturbed sleep and cancer outcomes,” says researcher David Gozal. “The take home message is to take care of your sleep quality and quantity like you take care of your bank account.”

In this research, tumors in animals with fragmented sleep were twice as large as they were in animals that slept normally. A follow-up experiment found that when tumor cells were implanted in the thigh muscle, which should help contain growth, the tumors were much more aggressive and invaded surrounding tissues in animals with disrupted sleep.

The message of the research: Improve your immunity with adequate, restful sleep. Otherwise, your body’s cancer defenses may collapse.

Carl Lowe

By Carl Lowe

has written about health, fitness and nutrition for a wide range of publications including Prevention Magazine, Self Magazine and Time-Life Books. The author of more than a dozen books, he has been gluten-free since 2007.

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