Do you think missing a night’s sleep has no effect on your body? Please think again.
According to a 2015 study, just one sleepless night may have more serious implications for our body than previously thought.
Researchers at Uppsala University and the Karolinaka Institute in Sweden discovered that missing a single night of sleep can alter the genes that control our body’s cellular biological clocks.
To arrive at this conclusion, the researchers studied 15 normal-weight men who were made to sleep for over eight hours in one of the two sessions and kept awake in the other session.
Light conditions, food intake and activity levels in the lab were strictly controlled and the participants were bed-restricted when they were kept awake.
“Our findings demonstrate that a single night of wakefulness can alter the epigenetic and transcriptional profile of core circadian clock genes in key metabolic tissues,” the researchers observed.
Dr Jonathan Cedernaes, lead author and a researcher at Uppsala University was surprised at how quick the changes occur.
“It was interesting that the methylation of these genes could be altered so quickly and that it could occur for these metabolically important clock genes.”
Dr Cedernaes and his team however admitted that they don’t know how long these changes last.
“It could be that these changed are reset after one or several nights of good sleep. On the other hand, epigenetic marks are suggested to be able to function a sort of metabolic memory and have been found to be altered in eg shift workers and people suffering from type 2 diabetes.”
Having a good night’s sleep is really important and something you shouldn’t joke with.
The study was published in Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
Phil