Who doesn’t want more sleep? The benefits are undeniable and nothing is better than waking up from a great night's sleep. Many people believe that you can obtain this sleep through proper circadian rhythm patterns or turning off your phone an hour before you go to bed but it turns out that there might be other ways you can achieve this glorious slumber. In this post I will examine a paper that discusses how our gut microbiome diversity can affect our sleep efficiency and how we can use lifestyle factors to achieve the benefits of a good night's rest.
Lack of sleep has been shown to have a wide range of negative effects ranging from a decrease in immune health to decreased cognitive ability. However, not many people are aware that your microbiome diversity may be affecting the quality of your sleep. With the explosion of popularity in gut microbiome research in recent years this linkage is becoming more and more clear. It has been shown that gut microbiome health can largely be impacted by common lifestyle factors such as diet, drug intake and our antibiotic intake. Furthermore, our gut microbiome can have major effects on mental and physical health through the routes such as the brain-gut-microbiome axis (BGMA). Disruptions to the BGMA have been associated with gastrointestinal disorders, depression and overall quality of life (Smith et al.,2019). Additionally, recent research has shown that this bacteria can also affect our hormonal, immune and neural responses (Zhu et al. 2017). Therefore, we can see that the gut microbiome can have numerous effects on a lot of the physiological systems in our body.
In this study they build on this by taking a deeper look at the effect that one's microbiome diversity can have on their sleep. They measure the efficiency of one's sleep and compare it to the overall diversity of the gut microbiome and found a positive correlation. This is an extremely important linkage because it shows a clear path between two things that were previously thought to be separate. The positive effects that efficient sleep can have on the body are well known and to see that your gut microbiome health can play a role in regulating this is extremely fascinating. In addition to the other benefits, this is important for us as college students approaching finals week. It has been shown that quality sleep increases cognitive ability, and therefore if you are able to make proper lifestyle choices that increase your gut microbiome diversity then you could start this cascading effect that will lead to your desired outcome.
Smith, R. P., Easson, C., Lyle, S. M., Kapoor, R., Donnelly, C. P., Davidson, E. J., Parikh, E., Lopez, J.
V., & Tartar, J. L. (2019). Gut microbiome diversity is associated with sleep physiology in humans.
PLoS ONE, 14(10), 1–17. https://doi-org.dml.regis.edu/10.1371/journal.pone.0222394
Zhu X , Han Y , Du J , Liu R , Jin K , Yi W . Microbiota-gut-brain axis and the central nervous system .
Oncotarget . 2017 ; 8 ( 32 ): 53829 – 38 . doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.17754
28881854 .
Gao, C., Terlizzese, T., & Scullin, M. K. (2019). Short sleep and late bedtimes are detrimental to
educational learning and knowledge transfer: An investigation of individual differences in
susceptibility. Chronobiology International: The Journal of Biological & Medical Rhythm Research,
I think this is an extremely important avenue of research, as there are so many aspects of gut microbiome and sleep that we haven't discovered. With the increasing obesity rates in our country and the increased frequency of the use of prescription sleep medications, it is essential we understand how these intertwine. One study I found was able to negatively correlate several taxa of bacteria with sleep deprivation, which may indicate decreased bacterial expression with sleep disturbance. Further research is necessary to determine how these specific taxa affect overall intestinal metabolism, absorption, and secretion as well as how it relates to overall physiology.
ReplyDeleteSmith, R. P., Easson, C., Lyle, S. M., Kapoor, R., Donnelly, C. P., Davidson, E. J., Parikh, E., Lopez, J. V., & Tartar, J. L. (2019). Gut microbiome diversity is associated with sleep physiology in humans. PloS one, 14(10), e0222394. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0222394
Sleep is one of the most important things that we need as humans. It is amazing to see that this is correlated with out gut microbiome! This brings me to question how much could our sleep benefit from taking probiotics. One study found that participants who took probiotics reported better sleep and less fatigue throughout their day.
ReplyDeletehttps://atlasbiomed.com/blog/sleep-digestion-and-weight-gain/#:~:text=Probiotic%20benefits%20are%20not%20a,Rhamnosus%2C%20L.