It turns out that there are solid reasons you feel really awful after a bad night's sleep.
Researchers have discovered that just one week of poor sleep can deleteriously affect hundreds of genes in your body through stress, inflammation and loss of immunity.
Scientists are working on figuring out exactly why it is that bad nights of sleep can, over time, lead to such health problems as obesity, heart disease and mental impairment.
A University of Surrey team in the UK found in its research that a truly bad night of sleep (less than six hours) can adversely affect more than 700 genes in one human body.
"Furthermore," says the University of Surrey statement, "the research shows that inadequate sleep reduced the number of genes that normally peak and wane in expression throughout the 24-hour day from 1,855 to 1,481."
The number of genes affected is raised sevenfold after one week of poor sleep. "Gene expression" patterns were analyzed by the researchers via 26 sleep-deprived volunteers in order to help determine how lack of sleep and health are connected.
"This research has helped us to understand the effects of insufficient sleep on gene expression," says Derk-Jan Dijk, director of the Sleep Research Centre at the University of Surrey. "Now that we have identified these effects we can use this information to further investigate the links between gene expression and overall health."
Other members on the research team included physiologists, sleep and circadian rhythm experts and experts in functional genomics and bioinformatics.
"The current interest in sleep and circadian rhythms as determinants of health and disease is a vital area of research," says Colin Smith, professor of functional genomics at the University of Surrey. "By combining our expertise in sleep and 'genomics' (the study of the full complement of our genes), we are starting to make breakthroughs that will have an impact on our understanding and treatment of poor health arising from insufficient sleep."
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