Social Jetlag: How Sleeping In Can Affect Your Gut Health

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During holidays, weekends, or public holidays, many of us tend to sleep a few extra hours to make up for lost rest. However, irregular sleep patterns can pose a threat to the quality of your gut microbiota, as revealed by researchers from King’s College London in a study published in the European Journal of Nutrition.

Social jetlag: a shift in rhythm between weekdays and weekends In their study, scientists aimed to investigate the connection between what they referred to as “social jetlag” – changes in the internal biological clock when sleep habits vary between workdays and days off – and the quality of diet, dietary habits, and the composition of the intestinal microbiome.

For the study, the team recruited 934 healthy adults from the “ZOE PREDICT” cohort, the largest ongoing nutritional study of its kind. Most of them slept for over seven hours per night throughout the week. The authors analyzed blood, stool, and intestinal microbiome samples, as well as blood sugar levels in individuals with irregular sleep, which included volunteers who slept an hour and a half or more extra on weekends compared to those with regular sleep hours.

Sleep: Harmful Gut Bacteria Proliferate “Under Dietary Influence” According to the results, the group with social jetlag slept for shorter durations and consisted of a higher proportion of younger individuals and males compared to the other group. Researchers observed that a mere 90-minute difference was linked to alterations in the composition of the intestinal microbiome. Irregular sleep patterns were associated with lower-quality diets, increased consumption of potatoes and sugary drinks, and reduced intake of fruits and nuts.

“The social jetlag was correlated with a higher relative abundance of 9 harmful gut bacteria and a lower abundance of 8 beneficial gut bacteria, partly under the influence of diet,” the research noted. Among the six most abundant bacteria in the social jetlag group, three were associated with “adverse” effects on health. These microbes were linked to poorer diet quality, indicators of obesity and cardiometabolic health, as well as blood markers related to higher levels of inflammation and cardiovascular risk.

“Maintaining regular sleep habits – that is, going to bed and waking up at the same time each day – is an easily adjustable behavior that we can all adopt and it can have a positive impact on our health through our gut microbiome,” concluded Sarah Berry, the study’s author, in a statement.