The Powerful Influence of the GI Microbiome on Sleep

Sleep issues represent a major struggle for millions of people: too little sleep, trouble falling asleep, trouble staying asleep, early morning awakenings followed by difficulty falling back asleep. Some people complain that, despite having a full night of sleep, they awake feeling like they didn’t sleep at all, struggling with sleepiness, fog, and fatigue all through waking hours. There are also known associations of health conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome and Parkinson’s disease with disruptions of sleep. 

The science that explores the role of gastrointestinal microbes in sleep are yielding new and exciting lessons. Recently, for instance, lack of sleep has been shown to adversely impact the composition of the GI microbiome, i.e., there is a bidirectional cross-talk: the brain communicates with the gut, the gut communicates with the brain in ways that influence sleep. But new observations are also emerging from our fermentation projects, especially our yogurts in which we ferment unique microbial species to very high counts, increasing the number of microbes a hundred, or even a thousand-fold, efforts that are yielding new lessons that have not yet been formally described in human scientific studies. So let’s discuss some of these interesting lessons that are emerging involving sleep. 

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Books:

Super Gut: The 4-Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health, and Lose Weight

Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight and Find Your Path Back to Health; revised & expanded ed