If you tend to sleep in at weekend you might well be negatively impacting your gut health according to a new study published in The European Journal of Nutrition.
The study of nearly 1,000 adults by King’s College London scientists found that even a 90-minute difference in your nights sleep over the course of a normal week could influence the types of bacteria found in the human gut. This was thought to be of particular concern to those people who regularly work shift patterns.
The researchers found multiple associations between ‘social jetlag’ which is described as the shift in your internal body clock when you are sleeping with a changing pattern between workdays and free days and the quality of your diet at these times, gut inflammation, and gut microbiome.
Having a wide range of different species of bacteria in your digestive system (microbiomes) is really important. Some are better than others, but getting the right mix is key to preventing a number of diseases and gut inflammation.
The study highlighted the composition of the microbiomes in your gut may negatively or positively affect your health by producing toxins or beneficial metabolites. The study then said that having social jet lag was associated with lower overall diet quality, higher intake of sugar-sweetened beverages, and lower intake of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and nuts, which may directly influence the abundance of specific microbiota in your abdomen.
The Relationship Between Sleeping and Eating
It has certainly long been established that largely due to hormone imbalances poor quality sleep impacts on people’s food choices with a tendency for tired people to crave higher carbohydrate, sugary and salty foods over healthier choices. Other studies have also found that social jetlag was linked to weight gain, illness, and mental fatigue too.
The relationship between sleep, diet and gut bacteria is complicated and there is still a lot more to find out, the research team says. In the meantime, their advice is to keep things consistent, if you can, over the course of a week.
Dr Sarah Berry part of the research team at King’s College, London said ‘Maintaining regular sleep patterns, so when we go to bed and when we wake each day, even if it is a non-work day, is an easily adjustable lifestyle behaviour we can all do, that may impact your health via your gut microbiome for the better.’
