Sleep deprivation of just 2 days may trigger changes in gut microbiota that are associated with poor metabolic health.
According to the researchers of the new study – including first author Christian Benedict of the Department of Neuroscience at Uppsala University in Sweden – some studies in mice and humans have suggested that gut bacteria have a circadian rhythm that might be disrupted by sleep loss.
“However, to date, there are no studies that have investigated the impact of insufficient sleep on the composition of the human gut microbiota,” they added.
While the team found no evidence that sleep loss altered the diversity of gut bacteria, their analysis did identify changes in microbiota – such as an increase in the ratio of Firmicutes to Bacteriodetes – which previous studies had been associating with obesity.
Additionally, the researchers found that following sleep restriction, subjects showed a 20 percent reduction in sensitivity to insulin – the hormone that regulates blood glucose levels.
“This decreased insulin sensitivity was, however, unrelated to alterations in gut microbiota following sleep loss,” says Benedict. “This suggests that changes in microbiota may not, at least in the short-term, represent a central mechanism through which one or several nights of curtailed sleep reduce insulin sensitivity in humans,” he added.
While these findings suggest sleep loss can trigger changes in gut bacteria, the researchers say further investigations are warranted to better understand whether these changes influence metabolic health.
The authors added, “given our small sample size that only involved healthy young men, larger and more long-term studies are required to investigate to what extent these findings persist over longer time periods and whether these are observed in females, older or diseased patients and in other sleep restriction paradigms.
Nevertheless, our study is the first to provide evidence for sleep deprivation-induced changes in microbial families of bacterial gut species, which have previously been linked to metabolic pathologies.”
Meanwhile, lack of sleep had been linked to increased risk of numerous health problems, including high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, obesity, and type-2 diabetes.
