How Are Your Gut Health And Sleep-Related?

 Sleep is an essential part of our daily lives, like eating and breathing. But sometimes we simply cannot fall asleep, and the reasons are many. Maybe we are stressed, depressed, insomniac, anxious, or binge-watching through our favorite Netflix show. Oh, and what about those mid-night hours when the existential crisis strikes us?

Okay, so these were some of the known reasons we are aware of, but what about those reasons that we cannot see or feel right away? Those reasons are happening inside us, in our guts. Confused?

Let us shed some light on the matter and your digestive system. Because according to the latest research by some genius scientists who can’t fall asleep either, our gut health and sleep are deeply related.

Our beloved gut and how it functions

Our gut or gastrointestinal tract is a long tube that starts from our mouth and ends at the anus. It is the central part of our digestive system and is also home to millions of bacteria and a few viruses and fungi. Most of these bacteria, viruses, and fungi are present in our colon, and together they form the microbiota or gut microbiome. A healthy person with a healthy gut microbiome has a mixture of both good and bad bacteria.

How we live and what we eat significantly affects our microbiome health, which affects our overall health. 

The relation between our gut and the brain

Before we tell further how your gut health and sleep are related, we will elaborate on how your gut and brain are closely connected. Experts discovered that your gut contents seriously affect your sleep due to the gut-brain axis or microbiota-gut-brain axis. 

Our command center or brain sends and receives messages from all parts of our body, but our brain and gut connection is quite robust. The gut microorganisms have sophisticated signaling mechanism to communicate with the brain. This communication between the brain and gut affects our mood, stress level, appetite, sleep, and other things. The two possibilities that the experts narrowed down are:

• The gut bacteria produce metabolites that go to the brain.

• The gut bacteria trigger immune system chemicals to release. The brain detects this release and reacts to it.

Our gut health and sleep patterns

Some research ascertained that our gut health and our gut bacteria’s happiness are vital to proper sleep. A 2016 study showed that the day and night cycle affects our circadian rhythm and the rhythm of gut microbes as well. Since the microbes’ activities heavily depend on a person’s day and night cycle, they affect other organs’ circadian rhythm as well.

Everybody knows that our sleep and appetite are closely related. Sleep deprivation can seriously affect our eating habits and throw our appetite off balance. It further causes unnatural eating habits like food cravings and leads to weight gain. Improper sleeping causes leptin drop (hormone responsible for appetite regulation and fat storage) levels in our body.

Sleep deprivation also affects the brain’s ability to control our impulses. Hence, some people with sleep disorders often complain about their inability to prevent overeating. 

Conclusion

One can achieve a proper balance between our gut health and sleep. All you have to do is adopt a healthy lifestyle that includes good eating habits, timely exercises, and overall good health. To further help you, there are prebiotics and probiotics to keep your gut microbiome healthy.