Older women can fight off inflammation with lots of sleep and a strong social life

• New research shows that aging women who sleep well and/or have strong social ties have lower levels of interleukin-6, an immune system protein that promotes inflammation and that tends to increase with age.
• Interleukin-6 (IL-6) has been linked to a variety of diseases including osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer.
• People who have relatively high levels of IL-6 are at greater risk for these diseases.
• Friedman, from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and colleagues examined the interplay between social engagement, sleep quality, and blood levels of IL-6 in 74 women between the ages of 61 and 90.
• The team reports their research in the early online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
• "Our goal was to find out if there are psychological factors that might protect people against high levels of IL-6 as they age and we had two interesting findings," Friedman told Reuters Health.
• "First, we found that sleep quality and social relationships appear to be protective against high levels of IL-6, even after accounting for other factors that could affect IL-6 levels, such as chronic illness, obesity, and smoking," he reported.
• Women who slept well had low levels of IL-6, as did women who reported strong social relationships, Friedman further explained.
• That is, IL-6 levels were only higher in women who slept poorly and who reported poor quality social relationships.
• "I would have expected an additive effect: that is having both good sleep and good social ties would be better than having one or the other, and having one would be better than having neither."
• The fact that good social ties can compensate for poor sleep, and vice versa, suggests a more complex relationship between these psychological and biological factors -- "which also means that we have lots more exciting work to do to figure out why this is," Friedman said.