sleep disorder

  • Sleep, Sleep Health

    Why sleep soothes distress: Neurobiology explained

    • Comments Off on Why sleep soothes distress: Neurobiology explained
    • by

    Original Post | Caroline Pierce, Medical Express

    A study published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience by an international team including the Woolcock’s Dr. Rick Wassing examined research into sleep disorders over more than two decades to prove a good night’s sleep is the perfect remedy for emotional distress.

    Nothing we haven’t known forever, some would argue, but Dr. Wassing who has spent the past two years on the project says there’s much more to it than that.

    “What we have done with this study is explain why. We looked at studies in neurobiology, neurochemistry and clinical psychology to get a real understanding of the mechanisms underlying how sleep helps us to deal with our emotional memories.”

    What the team of researchers believe after aggregating more than 20 years’ of scientific knowledge is that the way certain neurochemicals (for example, serotonin and noradrenaline) are regulated during sleep is crucial for the processing of emotional memories and our long-term mental health.

    Chemistry and circuitry

    Serotonin is involved in many, if not almost all, aspects of learning emotional experiences. It helps us assess and understand the world around us. Noradrenaline is all about “fight or flight”—it allows us to assess and respond to danger. Both are turned off during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and that creates this “really beautiful opportunity for the brain to engage in processes that are otherwise not doable when we are awake,” explains Dr. Wassing.

    There are two main ways we process emotional memory during sleep, he says, and they involve the brain’s hippocampus and amygdala.

    Our brains store what we learn each day. This learning is governed by the hippocampus aggregating and cataloging this new information into the “novelty” memory store as we process it. At the same time, if that new experience is emotional, the amygdala is very active and coupled with the autonomic nervous system—think racing heart, knots in your stomach, skin crawling.

    During REM sleep, our brains reactivate these new memories. It is as if the brain replays a summary of what had happened when we experienced the memory. But during REM sleep, when the noradrenergic and serotonergic systems are turned off, these memories can be moved into the “familiar” storage without experiencing the physical “fight or flight” response. That can’t happen while we’re awake or—as is the case for people with sleep disorders—when we don’t get consistent blocks of REM sleep.

    Shining a light on the brain

    Much of what we now know about the way information is processed by the brain comes from the relatively new field of optogenetics which is used to activate or inhibit very specific cell types in a neuronal network. This has allowed researchers to see what cell types and brain regions are involved in encoding emotional memories.

    According to Dr. Wassing, it has meant real breakthroughs in terms of our understanding of brain circuitry and neurobiology.

    It’s all well and good, he says, to look at neurons and receptors and circuits, but the researchers also assessed clinical psychology studies and found that their findings, especially relating to disconnecting amygdala reactivity and shutting down the autonomic nervous system, were corroborated.

    “All three levels of neuroscience align to produce the same conclusion, that the way the brain functions during REM sleep is important for processing emotional memories.”

    Making ‘good sleepers’

    So, where to now? “We know that with insomnia or other sleep disorders where people wake up from sleep a lot, we see an increased risk of developing mental health problems. Our hypothesis would be that that these awakenings from sleep lead to the fact that the noradrenergic system is not shut down for long periods of time (in fact, they might actually show enhanced activity) and that’s why these people might not be able to regulate emotional memories.”

    “The solution is to try to get a good night’s sleep, yes, but the problem is how then do we do that? We know that two out of three people with insomnia benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBTI) but that is mostly based on subjective ratings. There’s less evidence on objective sleep measures. The insomnia patient after CBTI is not necessarily a good sleeping individual, they still have some sleep disturbances but CBTI is enabling them to better deal with them.”

    “We need to critically think more about the mechanisms that regulate sleep. It’s very hard to target one system because sleep is very dynamic—the noradrenergic system shuts down during REM sleep, but it actually needs to be active during non-REM sleep so you can’t just turn it off for the entire sleep cycle.”

    “We need really creative ideas about how to design an intervention or a drug that can target these dynamics that happen during sleep and enable those systems to renormalize. We need to be targeting objective sleep and making people with insomnia good sleepers again.”

  • Uncategorized

    Dangers of Uncontrolled Sleep Apnea

    • Comments Off on Dangers of Uncontrolled Sleep Apnea
    • by

    Original Article | JohnsHopkins.org

    You’ve probably heard that regular exercise and a heart-healthy diet are the most important things you can do for your cardiovascular health. As it turns out, though, the quality of sleep you receive is also critical to your heart’s wellbeing. 

    In particular, undiagnosed sleep apnea is directly tied to an increased risk in cardiovascular and metabolic health. The scariest part? You might not even know you have this very common problem.

    “Sleep apnea happens when upper airway muscles relax during sleep and pinch off the airway, which prevents you from getting enough air. Your breathing may pause for 10 seconds or more at a time, until your reflexes kick in and you start breathing again,” explains Jonathan Jun, M.D. , a pulmonary and sleep medicine specialist at the Johns Hopkins Sleep Disorders Center.

    Sleep apnea occurs in about 3 percent of normal weight individuals but affects over 20 percent of obese people, Jun says. In general, sleep apnea affects men more than women. However, sleep apnea rates increase sharply in women after menopause. Sleep apnea is often linked to heart disease and metabolic issues like diabetes.

    What are the signs of sleep apnea?

    There are two kinds of sleep apnea: obstructive sleep apnea and central sleep apnea. Obstructive sleep apnea happens when air can’t flow into or out of the nose or mouth, although you’re trying to breathe. Central sleep apnea happens when the brain fails to send the right signals to your muscles to make you start breathing. (This type is less common.)

    “Sleep apnea may be noticed more by the bed partner than by the sleeper,” says Jun. “Your bed partner might notice that your breathing pauses, or they may complain of your loud snoring.”

    That said, snoring itself—though annoying—isn’t the same as sleep apnea. Snoring is just the vibration sound created by airway resistance. You can snore loudly and not have sleep apnea, and you may even have sleep apnea without much snoring.

    People with sleep apnea might also suffer from unexplained fatigue and mood swings, because their breathing interruptions continually wake them and prevent them from settling into a deep, nourishing sleep.

    The consequences can be significant, Jun says. “We’re talking about car accidents in the daytime, lost productivity at work, mood swings, waking up feeling groggy and falling asleep in class.”

    Other sufferers might wake up with a dry mouth, since sleep apnea tends to make you breathe with an open mouth, drying out your saliva. Some awaken with a headache, which may be caused by low oxygen or high carbon dioxide levels during sleep.

    How is Weight Control Linked to Sleep Apnea?

    “Weight control is very important. There are many studies showing that losing weight can either completely cure you of sleep apnea or at least make it less severe,” Jun says.


    Sleep apnea, cardiovascular risk and metabolism

    Several studies have shown an association between sleep apnea and problems like type 2 diabetes , strokes , heart attacks and even a shortened lifespan, says Jun. Why this connection? For one thing, obesity is common in sleep apnea patients, and obesity greatly increases risks of diabetes, stroke and heart attack, he says. “In most cases, obesity is the main culprit behind both conditions,” Jun explains.

    Still, it’s important to note that not everyone with sleep apnea is obese. Furthermore, evidence suggests an independent link between sleep apnea and diabetes. “Our lab and others have shown that sleep apnea is associated with higher risks of diabetes, independent of obesity, and that sleep apnea can increase blood sugar levels,” says Jun.

    For people who are overweight or obese, weight loss is key for treating or avoiding sleep apnea. People who accumulate fat in the neck, tongue and upper belly are especially vulnerable to getting sleep apnea. This weight reduces the diameter of the throat and pushes against the lungs, contributing to airway collapse during sleep.

    Women in particular should be careful as they age. While premenopausal women tend to put on weight in the hips and in the lower body instead of the belly, this shifts with time. Weight begins to accumulate in traditionally “male” areas like the tummy, and this leads to a greater chance of sleep apnea.

    “After menopause, hormones change and women tend to start looking like men in terms of where the weight gets put on. It’s a time to be paying attention to the risks of sleep apnea because women begin to catch up to men in the rates of apnea after menopause,” Jun says.15

    Diagnosing and treating sleep apnea for better health

    It’s important to treat sleep apnea, because it can have long-term consequences for your health. While there have been some high-profile deaths linked to sleep apnea—such as with Judge Antonin Scalia —Jun says that the true risk is from damage done over time.

    Obstructive sleep apnea can range from mild to severe, based on a measurement system called the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI). The AHI measures the number of breathing pauses that you experience per hour that you sleep.

    Obstructive sleep apnea is classified by severity:

    • Severe obstructive sleep apnea means that your AHI is greater than 30 (more than 30 episodes per hour)
    • Moderate obstructive sleep apnea means that your AHI is between 15 and 30
    • Mild obstructive sleep apnea means that your AHI is between 5 and 15

    Whether or not you need treatment for sleep apnea depends on its severity, whether or not you have symptoms such as sleepiness and other health conditions. For example, if you have risk factors for heart disease, your doctor might opt to treat you even for mild sleep apnea. On the other hand, if you have a severe case of sleep apnea, your doctor might insist on treatment even if you’re not sleepy.

    The main choice of therapy is a breathing device called a CPAP, or continuous positive airway pressure machine. A CPAP machine pipes humidified air through the nose, which creates air pressure to keep your throat open while asleep. This prevents pauses in breathing.

    “CPAP is the first-line treatment, and it’s very effective,” Jun says. A recent Johns Hopkins study looked at what happens to metabolism at night when sleep apnea patients don’t wear their CPAP. The study found that the resulting apnea caused a spike in blood sugar, heart rate, blood pressure and stress hormones—a response similar to what might happen if you were asked to get up in front of a crowd to speak. “It’s very similar to that type of a stress response,” says Jun. “I would liken sleep apnea to something like that happening on a nightly basis.”

    CPAP is not the only alternative.

    Many cannot tolerate the CPAP machine and are able to obtain the help they need from a Sleep Apnea Dental Specialist. Their use of an oral appliance has helped hundreds of thousands resolve their medical issues as they pertain to Sleep Apnea.

    Get the Medical Equipment You Need at Home

    Many studies show that regular use of CPAP or oral devices reduces blood pressure and improves wakefulness during the day. People with sleep apnea who use sleep apnea therapeutic devices also report improved quality of life. In some observational studies that compare people with apnea who seek sleep apnea remedies versus those who don’t, those seeking treatment have lower risk of stroke and heart attack and lower blood glucose, Jun notes.

    If you or your partner has noticed signs of sleep apnea, visit your doctor. A sleep specialist can order a sleep apnea test, which uses equipment to monitor your breathing and oxygen levels while you sleep. Often, you’ll visit a laboratory to spend the night for monitoring. Other times, it’s possible to use a portable, take-home kit. You’ll rest easier knowing the results.

  • Uncategorized

    Sleep Apnea. Bad for Your Brain.

    • Comments Off on Sleep Apnea. Bad for Your Brain.
    • by

    Original Article | BottomLine INC
    Chris Iliades, MD is a regular contributor to Bottom Line Health. He was an ear, nose, throat, head, and neck surgeon before becoming a full-time medical writer.

    According to the American Heart Association and the American Academy of Neurology, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is bad for brain health. Studies show that OSA causes cognitive impairment, which is the loss of your brain’s ability to remember, think, concentrate, learn, and make decisions.

    Sleep Apnea

    What happens during OSA?

    In people with OSA, the oral or nasal airway collapses during sleep and breathing stops for a short period. This is called apnea. Blood oxygen levels decrease and carbon dioxide levels increase. Rising carbon dioxide triggers your brain to wake you up enough to breathe. Almost everyone with OSA snores, usually loudly, so a sleeping partner may hear loud snoring followed by quiet, and then sudden gasping for air. In mild-to-moderate OSA, there may be between five and 30 episodes per hour. In severe OSA, these instances can occur more than 30 times per hour.

    A 2021 study reported at the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting showed that people with OSA were 60 percent more likely to score in a lower range on cognitive testing than people without it. The worse the OSA, the worse the cognitive decline. The average age of study participants was about 70.

    Further, OSA increases the risk of heart attack, stroke, heart arrhythmia, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes.

    Are you at risk?

    The American Heart Association estimates that OSA may affect close to 40 percent of U.S. adults and up to 80 percent of people with cardiovascular disease. It is more common in men and in people who are overweight. You could be at higher risk if you have a family history of OSA. Other risk factors include smoking, drinking alcohol, taking sleeping pills, and having any type of narrowing of the nasal or oral airway, like a deviated nasal septum or large tonsils or adenoids.

    Reduce risk, improve health

    Lowering risk can be as simple as exercising. An important study presented at the 2021 meeting of the American Heart Association showed that exercise reduces the risk of both OSA and cognitive decline.

    In the study, 47 patients with varying degrees of cognitive loss were tested for a cognition score. Half of the patients were given a six-month-long supervised exercise program. After six months, the exercise group had fewer OSA episodes, a 32 percent improvement in their cognitive scores, and better glucose metabolism in the brain.

    In addition to exercise, lifestyle changes that reduce the risk or improve symptoms of OSA include not drinking, not smoking, and losing weight. Sleeping on your side and propping up your upper body during sleep may also reduce OSA. In some cases, surgery can be used to correct a deviated septum or remove tonsils and adenoids if they are contributing to OSA.

    Diagnosis

    Mark Twain said, “There ain’t no way to know why a man can’t hear himself snore,” but there is a way to find out if you have sleep apnea. If your sleeping partner describes periods of snoring and apnea, or you wake up groggy with a headache and feel sleepy all day, you should have a sleep study.

    During the sleep study, you spend a night in a sleep lab, where specialists called polysomnographers document sleep apnea and grade the severity. Sleep study kits you can use at home are now available, so you may not need to spend the night sleeping in a laboratory.

    Treatment

    For mild sleep apnea, lifestyle changes, sleeping position, and sometimes an oral appliance that keeps your tongue from blocking your oral airway may be all you need. For more severe OSA, the treatment of choice is CPAP. During CPAP treatment, you wear a mask while you sleep that provides humidified oxygen through your nose to force open your airway. It is very effective but takes some getting used to, and you may need to experiment with different types of masks, levels of air pressure, and humidification devices to find the most comfortable option.

    A new technology called hypoglossal nerve stimulation may eliminate the need for CPAP for some people who can’t tolerate it. With this treatment, a pacemaker implanted in the chest stimulates the hypoglossal nerve to open the back of the throat.

    OSA is that it is both common and dangerous. If you have the symptoms, tell your doctor and get OSA under control now. Your brain and your sleeping partner will thank you.

  • Sleep Health, Sleep Study

    Sleep Disturbances Common in Patients Who Recovered from COVID

    • Comments Off on Sleep Disturbances Common in Patients Who Recovered from COVID
    • by

    Original Article | Jun 6, 2022 | Sleep Review Magazine

    Nearly all patients who recovered from COVID-19 report lingering fatigue, while half experience sleep disturbances, according to a recent analysis from Cleveland Clinic. Researchers found that race, obesity, and mood disorders are contributors. 

    Investigators analyzed data from 962 patients from the Cleveland Clinic ReCOVer Clinic between February 2021 and April 2022. The patients were recovered from COVID-19 and completed the sleep disturbance and fatigue questionnaires of the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System. More than two-thirds of patients (67.2%) reported at least moderate fatigue, while 21.8% reported severe fatigue. Eight percent of patients reported severe sleep disturbances, and 41.3% reported at least moderate sleep disturbances.  

    “Sleep difficulties are highly prevalent and debilitating symptoms reported in patients with post-acute sequealae of COVID-19,” says Cinthya Pena Orbea, MD, a sleep specialist at Cleveland Clinic, in a release. “Our study suggests that the prevalence of moderate to severe sleep disturbances is high and that Black race confers increased odds to suffer from moderate to severe sleep disturbances highlighting the importance to further understand race-specific determinants of sleep disturbances in order to develop race-specific interventions.” 

    Patients with moderate-to-severe compared with normal-to-mild sleep disturbances had higher body mass indices, were more likely to be Black, and had worse general anxiety disorder.  

    After adjusting for demographics, Black patients were three times more likely to experience moderate-to-severe sleep disturbances. 

    The research abstract was published recently in an online supplement of the journal Sleep and will be presented June 6 and 7 during SLEEP 2022.

    Photo 188719463 © Robert Knesc

  • Uncategorized

    How To Wind Down for Better Sleep—Especially if You’re an Introvert

    • Comments Off on How To Wind Down for Better Sleep—Especially if You’re an Introvert
    • by

    Original Post | Erica Sloan・December 15, 2021

    Picture the pinnacle of social exhaustion: Perhaps, you’ve just spent four hours at a work holiday party, meeting the humans behind a bunch of Zoom squares IRL for the first time. Or, maybe you had a day of reconnecting with family members you haven’t seen in two, time-blurred pandemic years. It would seem that hitting the hay would be the most obvious solution—but once you get into bed, your body seems to say, Not so fast. For introverts, in particular, the draining nature of being social can leave you, paradoxically, chasing sleep.

    In general, that counterproductive scenario springs from the difference between feeling fatigued and feeling tired, says psychologist and behavioral sleep-medicine specialist Shelby Harris, PsyD, DBSM, author of The Women’s Guide to Overcoming Insomnia. While the former reflects a total drain of energy (which tends to happen for an introvert after a social event), the latter is more about physical sleepiness, which is that drowsy feeling that allows you to drift off to dreamland.

    “For introverts, socializing tends to overstimulate the brain and body, leading some to feel irritable, indecisive, or on edge.” —behavioral sleep-medicine specialist Shelby Harris, PsyD

    “For introverts, socializing tends to overstimulate the brain and body, leading some to feel irritable, indecisive, or on edge, or even to get physical symptoms, like a headache or muscle aches,” says Dr. Harris. “While all of that can be extremely exhausting, it doesn’t necessarily lead to feeling sleepy.” By contrast, a social event can actually flood the brain with uppers like dopamine, adrenaline, and cortisol, which, for an introvert, tend to be perceived negatively, says Mike Dow, PsyD, psychotherapist at Field Trip Health, a psychedelic-assisted therapy practice. In fact, these neurotransmitters can keep you reeling long after an event wraps up (cue: the introvert hangover).RELATED STORIESHow To Make Waking Up in the Dark Suck Less, According to…Not an Early Bird or Night Owl? Science Suggests There May Be…

    Trying to get to sleep in that state can require a whole lot more than simply getting into bed; after all, the process of falling asleep is nothing like an on-off switch, biologically, says Dr. Harris. For an introvert, especially, easing your mind into sleep mode is best done with a calming pre-bed ritual. Below, the experts share tips for socially exhausted introverts who want nothing more than to get a good night’s sleep.

    It’s especially hard for introverts to sleep after a highly social experience, but these 5 tips can help

    1. Create a container for your thoughts.

    “Introverts are internal processors,” says psychologist Laurie Helgoe, PhD, author of Introvert Power: Why Your Inner Life Is Your Hidden Strength. “They often take inputs from conversations and process them later, which can mean mulling over what someone said, replaying or continuing a conversation, coming up with a better comeback, and the like.”https://556d592cd02b0abe412f5bc25f63d090.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

    Journaling can help put a pause to that spiral by providing a space for you to essentially unload all of your thoughts, and, if you’d like, feel free to return to them later—ideally at a time when you’re not trying desperately to get catch precious zzz’s.

    2. Talk back to negative self-talk.

    In re-assessing a social event (as introverts are wont to do), you may find that certain percolating thoughts devolve into negative or anxious ones. For example, it’s easy to start over-evaluating and hyper-personalizing, says Dr. Dow. “Maybe you start thinking, ‘Was Cindy looking at me weird? I must have done something wrong.’ And as the night goes on, the thoughts can turn more catastrophic in nature, leading to something like, ‘If I don’t get a good night’s sleep, I’m going to botch this presentation tomorrow, and if that happens, I could get fired,’ and so on,” he says.https://556d592cd02b0abe412f5bc25f63d090.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

    In that case, he suggests employing one of the classic strategies of cognitive behavioral therapy, which is to reconsider thoughts and feelings not as facts but merely as information, which you can choose to disregard. “Access the best parts of yourself to talk back to those inner voices,” he says.

    3. Write in a gratitude journal.

    Taking time to remember all the things for which you’re grateful—whether they include highlights from the social activity of the day, or something else entirely—can also help you forgo the kind of thought-spiraling that tends to ward off sleep.https://556d592cd02b0abe412f5bc25f63d090.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

    “Because introverts are natural problem-solvers, they can get stuck in focusing on what’s not working,” says Dr. Helgoe. “But a gratitude list can help you balance that problem orientation by reminding you of what is working.” And that, in and of itself, can be incredibly soothing.

    4. Practice some non-screen-based relaxation.

    While it’s tempting to scroll through Instagram or scan emails in bed to occupy a restless mind, that level of mental stimulation, combined with the melatonin-suppressing blue light, is a recipe for wakefulness. Instead, do anything non-screen-related that feels calming and relaxing, whether that’s reading, knitting, listening to music, or even coloring or doing a simple crossword or jigsaw puzzle, says Dr. Harris. (You can also practice mindfulness meditation, but because this can be challenging to really sink into with an overactive mind, Dr. Harris says it’ll be most beneficial for someone who already has a daytime meditation practice.

    If you’re really at a loss for where to start, try connecting with each of the five senses, says Dr. Dow: “Soothe your sense of touch with a bath, your sense of smell with a lavender candle, your sense of sight with dimmed lighting, your sense of hearing with calming music or a meditation track, and your sense of taste with a nighttime tea.”

    5. And if you’re tossing and turning, get out of bed.

    Trying to make sleep happen often keeps it from, well, happening. So, instead of remaining in bed and trying to will yourself asleep, get up, walk into another room, and return to whatever wind-down exercise you were doing beforehand in dim lighting, says Dr. Harris: “Simply changing what you’re doing and where you’re doing it can often help stop an overactive mind in its tracks.”

    Oh hi! You look like someone who loves free workouts, discounts for cutting-edge wellness brands, and exclusive Well+Good content. Sign up for Well+, our online community of wellness insiders, and unlock your rewards instantly.

  • Sleep Health

    Body Clock Off-Schedule? Sleepless Nights?Prebiotics May Help

    • Comments Off on Body Clock Off-Schedule? Sleepless Nights?Prebiotics May Help
    • by

    Original Article Posted by Sleep Review Staff | Sep 16, 2021 | Jet Lag Disorder

    Whether it’s from jetting across time zones, pulling all-nighters at school or working the overnight shift, chronically disrupting our circadian rhythm—or internal biological clocks—can take a measurable toll on everything from sleep, mood and metabolism to risk of certain diseases, mounting research shows.

    But a new University of Colorado Boulder study funded by the U.S. Navy suggests simple dietary compounds known as prebiotics, which serve as food for beneficial gut bacteria, could play an important role in helping us bounce back faster.

    “This work suggests that by promoting and stabilizing the good bacteria in the gut and the metabolites they release, we may be able to make our bodies more resilient to circadian disruption,” senior author Monika Fleshner, a professor of integrative physiology, said in a statement.

    Woman Suffering from A Sleepless Night

    The animal study, published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity, is the latest to suggest that prebiotics—not to be confused with probiotics found in fermented foods like yogurt and sauerkraut—can influence not only the gut, but also the brain and behavior.

    Naturally abundant in many fibrous foods—including leeks, artichokes and onions—and in breast milk, these indigestible carbohydrates pass through the small intestine and linger in the gut, serving as nourishment for the trillions of bacteria residing there.

    The authors’ previous studies showed that rats raised on prebiotic-infused chow slept better and were more resilient to some of the physical effects of acute stress.

    For the new study, part of a multi-university project funded by the Office of Naval Research, the researchers sought to learn if prebiotics could also promote resilience to body-clock disruptions from things like jet lag, irregular work schedules or lack of natural daytime light—a reality many military personnel live with.

    “They are traveling all over the world and frequently changing time zones. For submariners, who can be underwater for months, circadian disruption can be a real challenge,” said lead author Robert Thompson, a postdoctoral researcher in the Fleshner lab. “The goal of this project is to find ways to mitigate those effects.”

    How a healthy gut may prevent jet lag

    The researchers raised rats either on regular food or chow enriched with two prebiotics: galactooligosaccharides and polydextrose.

    They then manipulated the rats’ light-dark cycle weekly for eight weeks—the equivalent of traveling to a time zone 12 hours ahead every week for two months.

    Rats that ate prebiotics more quickly realigned their sleep-wake cycles and core body temperature (which can also be thrown off when internal clocks are off) and resisted the alterations in gut flora that often come with stress.

    “This is one of the first studies to connect consuming prebiotics to specific bacterial changes that not only affect sleep but also the body’s response to circadian rhythm disruption,” said Thompson.

    The study also takes a critical step forward in answering the question: How can simply ingesting a starch impact how we sleep and feel?

    The researchers found that those on the prebiotic diet hosted an abundance of several health-promoting microbes, including Ruminiclostridium 5 (shown in other studies to reduce fragmented sleep) and Parabacteroides distasonis.

    They also had a substantially different “metabolome,” the collection of metabolic byproducts churned out by bacteria in the gut.

    Put simply: The animals that ingested the prebiotics hosted more good bacteria, which in turn produced metabolites that protected them from something akin to jet lag.

    Are supplements worthwhile?

    Clinical trials are now underway at CU Boulder to determine if prebiotics could have similar effects on humans.

    The research could lead to customized prebiotic mixtures designed for individuals whose careers or lifestyles expose them to frequent circadian disruption.

    In the meantime, could simply loading up on legumes and other foods naturally rich in the compounds help keep your body clock running on time? It’s not impossible but unlikely, they say—noting that the rats were fed what, in human terms, would be excessive amounts of prebiotics.

    Why not just ingest the beneficial bacteria directly, via probiotic-rich foods like yogurt?

    That could also help, but prebiotics may have an advantage over probiotics in that they support the friendly bacteria one already has, rather than introducing a new species that may or may not take hold.

    What about prebiotic dietary supplements?

    “If you are happy and healthy and in balance, you do not need to go ingest a bunch of stuff with a prebiotic in it,” said Fleshner. “But if you know you are going to come into a challenge, you could take a look at some of the prebiotics that are available. Just realize that they are not customized yet, so it might work for you but it won’t work for your neighbor.”