Every cell in our bodies carries genetic³ instructions in our DNA⁴ that act as a kind of operating manual. However, each cell only 'reads' the portion of this manual it needs at any given moment.

 

Can sleep affect how a gene¹ reads instructions? It's a question asked by Professor Derk-Jan Dijk at the University of Surrey.

 

He set up an experiment and asked his volunteers to spend a week sleeping around seven and a half hours to eight hours a night and the next sleeping six and a half to seven hours.

 

Blood samples were taken each week to compare which genes in blood cells were being used during the long and short nights. The results were startling.

 

Several hundred genes changed in the amount they were being used, including some that are linked to heart disease, cancer, and Type 2 diabetes⁵.

 

Genes to do with cell repair and replenishment⁶ were used much less.

 

Sleep restriction⁷ (six and a half to seven hours a night) changed 380 genes.

 

Of these, 220 genes were down regulated by sleep restriction (their power was reduced), while 160 were up regulated (their power was increased).

 

Those affected⁸ included body-clock genes which are linked to diabetes.

 

One of the most downgraded genes is that which has a role in controlling insulin and is linked to diabetes and insomnia⁹. The most upgraded gene is linked to heart disease.

 

So changing sleep by tiny amounts can upgrade or downgrade genes that can influence our health and the diseases we become prey¹⁰ to when we sleep too little.

 

The important message is that getting close to eight hours of sleep a night can make a dramatic difference to our health in just a few days through the way it looks after our genes.

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