The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Trauma and Adversity—A Transformative Guide to Understanding Childhood Trauma and Health

by Nadine Burke Harris

Childhood adversity significantly increases the risk for just about every sleep disorder there is, including nightmares, insomnia, narcolepsy, sleepwalking, and psychiatric sleep disorders (sleep-eating, anyone?). Nighttime sleep plays a powerful role in influencing brain function, hormones, the immune system, and even the transcription of DNA. Sleep helps properly regulate both the HPA and the SAM axes. During sleep, levels of cortisol, adrenaline, and noradrenaline drop. As a result, lack of sleep is associated with increased levels of stress hormones and increased stress reactivity. As you know from Chapters 5 and 6, these stress hormones kick off the party, triggering brain, hormone, immune, and epigenetic responses to stress. The downstream effects are impaired cognitive function, memory, and mood regulation. Sleep deprivation doesn’t just make you groggy and cranky; it also makes you sick. Lack of sleep is associated with increased inflammation and reduced effectiveness of the immune system. While you’re catching z’s, your immune system does a systems upgrade, using the downtime to calibrate its defenses. Everyone knows it’s important to get sleep when you’re sick, but it’s just as important when you’re healthy. Lack of sleep leaves people more susceptible to illness because the immune system doesn’t appropriately fight off the viruses and bacteria that it is constantly exposed to.