Irregular sleep, such as sleeping in on weekends, is linked to poor eating habits and harms gut health, reports a new study.
Irregular sleep, for example get up much later on weekends compared to the week, would be enough to affect our intestinal health, reports a study conducted by researchers at King’s College London and published on August 2, 2023 in the scientific journal European Journal of Nutrition. More precisely, shifting its rise even byan hour and a half on weekends would have consequences on the circadian rhythm (the internal clock of the human body) which would be more misaligned, but also on diet quality, eating habits and gut microbiota composition. This is what the researchers called the “social jet lag“, in other words the difference between the sleep of the week (when one works for example) and the sleep of the weekend or days off (when one is not obliged to set an alarm clock). They estimated that this “lag social hours” concerned 40% of the population.
9 more bad gut bacteria
To arrive at this hypothesis, the researchers analyzed sleep, eating habits, heart health, metabolic health (e.g. blood sugar) and bowel movements after meals. 934 healthy adults who slept an average of 7 hours a night during the week and some of whom slept on average 1h30 more on weekends. At the end of their analysis, they observed that people who had irregular sleep had poorer eating habits (they tended to eat less healthy, consume more sugary drinks, more starchy foods, fewer fruits, vegetables and oilseeds) than people whose sleep was regular. Also, their gut microbiota was of lower quality and had slightly higher inflammation markers, which is a contributing factor obesitymetabolic diseases such as diabetes And cardiovascular illnesses. “Social jet lag was correlated with a higher abundance of 9 Bad Gut Bacteria and a lower abundance of 8 good intestinal bacteria partly under the influence of diet“, can we read in the results of the study. Further research is however necessary to confirm or refute these results.
An increased risk of diabetes and obesity
“When you mess up your clock, especially with breaks in rhythm between the week and the weekend, you introduce metabolic changes that are harmful to your body (risk of diabetes, obesity, etc.)“, confided to us Dr. Royant-Parola, sleep specialist, during a previous interview.Globally, the French population is chronically sleep deprived, most people get up much later on the weekends and have want to enjoy their Saturday night. They tend to go to bed later. Gold, late night sleep is not as restorative as early night sleep because we do less deep slow sleep at the end of the night than at the beginning of the night. And unfortunately, the “lost” sleep of the beginning of the night cannot be recovered in the morning“, continued Dr. Marc Rey, neurologist and President of the National Institute of Sleep and Vigilance (INSV), whom we had interviewed on the subject. Of course, if from time to time you shift your time by one hour going to bed or that you stray, it’s not dramatic, but if every weekend you shift several hours, then it can become harmful.