Even a night’s bad sleep has adverse effects on the body, says study
Posted on: 22/Jul/2015 11:00:44 AM
Researchers at Sweden’s Uppsala University have said that even one night’s bad sleep can alter our body’s cellular clocks.
According to a new study, although many think that a night’s bad sleep or no sleep is harmless, it does a lot more harm than we think. Lack of sleep alters the genes that control our body clock. A disrupted body clock can have side effects that result in change in body temperature and appetite. It also leads to changes in brain activity. It is also known to be linked to Type 2 Diabetes and obesity.
Says a researcher, ‘Previous research has shown that our metabolism is negatively affected by sleep loss... Since ablation of clock genes in animals can cause these disease states, our current results indicate that changes of our clock genes may be linked to such negative effects caused by sleep loss... As far as we know, we are the first to directly show that epigenetic changes can occur after sleep loss in humans, but also in these important tissues. 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... (We) don`t yet know how permanent these changes are. It could be that these changes 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 e.g. shift workers and people suffering from type 2 diabetes. This could mean that at least some types of sleep loss or extended wakefulness, as in shift work, could lead to changes in the genome of your tissues that can affect your metabolism for longer periods.’
