Are we sicker at night than during the day?

While sick with the flu, many people are wondering why they tend to feel worse at night than during the day. One of the reasons is that our body pressure changes when we lay down. This tends to heighten most flu and cold symptoms like, congestion, ear pain, runny nose, sore throat, and coughing.

Another reason we feel better during the day is because our hormone levels differ from day to night. Hormones help us to wake up in the morning, sleep at night, and they affect how we feel pain. One particular type of hormone is cortisol, which is more active during the day. Cortisol blocks some of the flu related pain during the day and helps control our fever. However, at night our cortisol levels decrease, which means more pain and a resumption of the fever.

Also, during the day our senses are on overload. There are numerous sights, sounds, and distractions that our brain is busy processing so that it doesn’t concentrate on the pain we are feeling. At night there isn’t nearly that much stimuli to distract are brains. This means our brains can spend more time focusing on the pain our bodies feel which will amplify symptoms at night. However, don’t let this fool you, just because you feel better during the day it doesn’t mean you are.

Source: Dr. Green.com

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