Are You Restless at Night and Exhausted All Day? This May Be Why

In this article, you will find how microbes in our body contribute to our stress levels and help us sleep at night.

In order to sleep well, we need to reassure our body that we are safe.

To do this we need to:

• Minimise outside stressors
• Minimise inside stressors

You probably already heard about the outside stressors everywhere, like not going on social media or not thinking about troubles from work/school when trying to sleep. However, have you heard that inside stressors beyond our thoughts also contribute to our body’s feeing of safety?

The Hypothalamus, the master of regulating all things inside our body (temperature, blood pressure, etc.) also regulates our stress levels.

A study by Tofani et al. from the University College of Cork tested how the amount of microbes inside the body of mice contributes to their stress levels. They raised mice without any microbes in their environment and food. They found that the hypothalamus significantly increased their stress levels long-term as a result.

This relates to us through the fact that if we, like the mice, lack a diverse microbiome, we will also be more stressed long term and not be able to sleep well.

To keep a diverse microbiome inside ourselves, we need to eat a wide variety and the right kinds of food – food filled with prebiotics, such as vegetables, fruits and whole grains.

A side note that will also help you sleep better is not eating too close to when you go to sleep, this is because the microbiome in your gut changes with the day/night cycles. And feeding the night shift microbiomes disrupts their natural circadian rhythm. Kind of like if someone were to pour cold water on you while you are sleeping.

So, if you are to take anything from this, it would be that what we eat and when directly impacts how well we sleep and how stressed we are overall.