Only one week of sleep debt changes the activity of hundreds of your genes. This finally might explain why too less sleep is connected with so many health problems. Different studies revealed that people with very few sleep rather suffer under cardiovascular diseases, diabetes or metabolic disorders. Also, the immune system is affected by chronical lack of sleep. The biological processes that underlie these observations are not precisely identified yet.
A research team round Carla Moeller-Levet, University of Surrey, Guildford (GB), specially examined the activity of genes. The participants got two times, seven nights each into a sleeping laboratory. One week, they were allowed to sleep in and rested about 8.5 hours per night. The other week, they were wakened in the morning after less than six hours of sleep. After the two weeks, the participants had to continuously stay awake about 40 hours, each. The scientists analyzed, how the gen-activity of the white blood-cells changed. These cells are quite easy to test and therefore easy to examine. According to the scientific final report, in total 711 genes were clearly more or less active after the lack of sleep – 444 genes were downregulated and 267 upregulated. After all, these are about three percent of the approx. 23 000 genes of a human being. Interesting in these findings is the fact that above all those genes were affected that are responsible for inflammations, immune response and stress reactions.
The activity of genes that normally underlie the day-night-rhythm also got affected by the lack of sleep. Amongst others, genes that control the metabolism are included. Therewith, it got scientifically investigated for the first time how many human genes are influenced by a chronical lack of sleep. And the indication that too less or disturbed sleep causes a whole range of health disturbances gets substantiated.
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