Sleep and Your Gut Bacteria
Sleep! When I don’t get enough sleep, I know that I’m not as focused in the morning and have a little less energy. What about you? How does a lack of sleep affect you? My guess is that your performance and attitude the next day is affected in one way or another. What we don’t see, is how our gut is affected by those late, sleepless or tossing and turning nights.
Our circadian rhythms – those patterns of brainwave activity that affect hormones, cell regeneration and biological activities in our day to day life. And sleeping well at the right time each day is essential to keeping the circadian rhythms functioning properly so we function properly, too.
It might surprise you that our gut bacteria and microbes are actually the regulators of this function and that our sleeps patterns are an issue for our microbes. This is probably the most important – though invisible – consequence of poor sleep. All those microbes need us to rest so they can do their thing while we sleep and keep their balance as it should be.
There is also more news you might be interested in. Not having the right microbes may be lowering your metabolic rate while you sleep, and this can lead to weight gain. This is based on a mouse study at UI Carver College of Medicine which found that mice given a drug that lowers beneficial bacteria, had a lower metabolic rate both when resting and when asleep, causing them to gain weight.
So, what should you do? Should you work on sleeping better to help the microbes or should you work on your gut health to help you sleep better? The answer is to do both. There are number of strategies that can help.
To help reset your circadian rhythm:
Go to bed at a set time and get up at the same time as much as possible
Avoid bright lights near bedtime
Avoid eating or exercising close to bedtime
Sleep in dark space – light tricks the body into thinking it is time to be awake.
Develop a relaxing routine before bed whether it is taking a bed, deep breathing exercises or having a nice cup of herbal tea such as chamomile or valerian.
For those who have irregular work and therefore, sleep schedules, consider talking to a practitioner about taking melatonin.
Diet also plays a role. In another mouse study, both high fat and low fat diets played a negative role in the function of circadian rhythms and they also altered the microbiome. Short-chain fatty acid production was lower, especially butyrate which is essential for circadian rhythm function. Butyrate is produced by beneficial colon bacteria from resistant starch found in complex carbohydrates such as potatoes, wheat, rice, legumes and sweet potatoes. To improve gut health:
Eat prebiotic foods, especially those with resistant starch
Take probiotics which can help melatonin levels which, in turn, help restore circadian rhythms.
Butyrate supplements are available if you are unsure as to how well you are producing it.
Sleep is one more example of the potential problems caused by dysbiosis and why we should be focused on improving our gut health.
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