Rest is crucial for any type of recovery and proper immune function, and this means ensuring you get the right amount and quality of sleep, and that your lifestyle promotes resting sufficiently during the day.
Sleep is a natural, restorative process, and ‘normal’ sleep and circadian system supports relation between the immune system and central nervous system (8). Without quality sleep, you’ll not only experience physical fatigue and feeling tied, but you’ll find it much harder to focus and have generally lower moods. Quality sleep during post-viral fatigue can seem even harder to achieve with the combination of painful muscles, tired but wired exhaustion and the emotional repercussions of the viral infection.
For better sleep, we strongly suggest focusing on sleep hygiene, improving your routine, surroundings and comfort to ensure a better, longer and less disturbed sleep. This could include keeping a dark, quiet bedroom, switching away from blue light emitting appliances before sleep, or using comfortable bedding to support your sore muscles. Establishing and maintaining a wind-down routine can be invaluable to sleep success. Hot showers before bed can ease aching muscles and help your body to drop its temperature ready for a deep sleep. Anecdotal evidence has found that low doses of CBD oil can help to relax, and supplements that promote melatonin such as 5HTP, can also help. Warm drinks, herbal relaxants and supplements can help you feel relaxed and can be a good natural alternative to sleeping medications.
During the day, you can prime yourself for better sleep that night by stimulating your natural melatonin supply (the chemical that creates deep restful sleep). Some of the easiest, most effective ways to do this is to gain adequate exposure to natural light during the day, and to add nutrition from tart cherries into your diet, that is naturally shown to elongate sleep. (9) Adding magnesium into your day as a supplement, topical cream or bath can help to further relax the sore muscles further and supports deeper sleep.
If you struggle to mentally switch off, listening to gentle sounds, music, or an audiobook can help distract the mind from pain and anxiety while you drift off. If sleep still doesn’t come, getting up and walking around, stretching and foam rolling can help soothe sore, tight muscles.
Sufferers of post-viral fatigue can also benefit from wearing KYMIRA infrared to help promote longer, high quality sleep, relaxation of tight muscles and pain relief to help them stay asleep. Infrared waves promote better sleep and the Nitric Oxide produced by the chemical reaction in the wearer is a natural muscle relaxant and pain reliever, by stimulating the same chemical pathways as an opiate naturally. Wearers of our products have reported a 15.9% improvement in sleep quality, a 15.8% improvement in levels of fatigue, and a 13.6% reduction in overall daily soreness, just from sleeping in the clothing alone.