Restless Minds, Unhealthy Guts: The Crucial Role of Sleep and 10 Ways to Sleep Better

Me: I need to fall asleep. Brain: No, let’s stay awake and think about every decision we made today.

I feel that one deeply. Ever have a night like that?

Why Sleep Matters

Sleep is vital for health and well-being. This probably is not earth-shattering news to you. But if you’re like me, sometimes you need a reminder of why we need to prioritize certain things. So, let’s do that.

Healthy sleep is important for cognitive functioning, mood, mental health, and cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and metabolic health.₁

But did you know that it’s also key for our gut health?

There is research showing how sleep deprivation affects our gut microbiome by causing dysbiosis or increasing the unhealthy gut bugs over the beneficial ones.₂ Our gut microbiota plays a variety of important roles when it comes to our body’s overall health.

The Many Roles of the Gut Microbiota

• Breaks down food into nutrients that the body can use. It also helps digest fiber.
• Healthy levels of bacteria help boost metabolism.
• Works as a team with the immune system to protect the body from disease and infection.
• Helps protect against pathogens and protect from harmful bacteria in the gut.
• Affects behavior and mood via the gut-brain axis.
• Extracts energy and nutrients from food.

Now that we have been reminded of why sleep is important, let’s go through some tangible ways you can set yourself up to improve your sleep and reap the gut benefits.

10 Ways to Sleep Soundly

1. Go for a walk after dinner. Walking helps stimulate digestion by encouraging food to move through the stomach and digestive tract. Keep intensity at a low to moderate level if you are prone to stomach upset.
2. Avoid eating a few hours before bed. By allowing enough time for digestion, you enable your digestive system to process the food you eat without causing disruptions to your sleep. Also, providing ample time for digestion can help prevent acid reflux symptoms.
3. Turn off screens two hours before bed. Social media and screen time can be very stimulating to the nervous system. Blue light can also disturb the circadian rhythm and sleep quality. The blue light that comes from LED lights and many electronic devices can decrease the release of melatonin and disturb your body’s biological clock.₃
4. Turn down the lights. About an hour before bed, it can be very helpful to turn down the lights. This helps mimic the natural lights outdoors and sends the signal to your body’s circadian clock that it’s time to prepare for sleep.
5. Keep your wake-up and going-to-bed times consistent as much as possible. This helps regulate our circadian rhythm. And why all this chatter about circadian rhythm? When our circadian rhythm is “off” it has been shown to lead to issues with our gastrointestinal system, (abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea), and metabolic diseases. A disruption to our circadian rhythm can also throw off important functions like our digestive secretions, enzyme activity, intestinal motility, and the rate of nutrient absorption. It’s also been found to increase intestinal permeability.₄
6. Increase the diversity of nutrient-dense, whole foods that you eat.  Studies show that by increasing the diversity of the “good gut bugs”, sleep quality is increased.₅ The gut-sleep connection is bidirectional.
7. Balance the macronutrients in your meals and snacks. By doing this, we increase satiation and better regulate blood sugar. When we eat meals during the day that aren’t properly balanced, this can set us up for a rollercoaster of blood sugar highs and lows that continue through the night, which can disrupt sleep.  
8. Drink a cup of calming tea. Sipping a cup of herbal tea before bed can support relaxation and prepare your body for sleep. Ingredients like chamomile, lavender, passionflower, and lemon balm can be very soothing. 
9. Nourish your nervous system. Provide yourself some time to detach from work and other stimulating activities of the day. Keeping this time as mellow as you can is key for preparing your body for restful sleep. An Epsom salt bath, some calming music, journaling, prayer, reading the Bible, and performing some physiological sighs, can all be powerful.
10. Complete a “brain dump” before getting into bed. Before going to bed, it can be helpful to think about and write down your priority list for the next day. This helps lessen your worries so you can rest better.

By prioritizing our sleep, we will support a healthy gut terrain. By incorporating some of the habits above, you will be on your way to a happier gut. Have you found any of these habits to improve your sleep? Let me know in the comments!

Resources:

1. Ramar, K., Malhotra, R. K., Carden, K. A., Martin, J. L., Abbasi-Feinberg, F., Aurora, R. N., Kapur, V. K., Olson, E. J., Rosen, C. L., Rowley, J. A., Shelgikar, A. V., & Trotti, L. M. (2021). Sleep is essential to health: an American Academy of Sleep Medicine position statement. Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 17(10), 2115–2119. 
2. Sun, J., Fang, D., Wang, Z., & Liu, Y. (2023). Sleep Deprivation and Gut Microbiota Dysbiosis: Current Understandings and Implications. International journal of molecular sciences, 24(11), 9603.
3. Wahl, S., Engelhardt, M., Schaupp, P., Lappe, C., & Ivanov, I. V. (2019). The inner clock-blue light sets the human rhythm. Journal of biophotonics, 12(12), e201900102.
4. Duboc, Henri MD, PhD*,†; Coffin, Benoit MD, PhD*,†; Siproudhis, Laurent MD, PhD‡. Disruption of Circadian Rhythms and Gut Motility: An Overview of Underlying Mechanisms and Associated Pathologies. Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology 54(5):p 405-414, May/June 2020. | DOI: 10.1097/MCG.0000000000001333
5. The gut-sleep connection is bidirectional. Smith, R. P., Easson, C., Lyle, S. M., Kapoor, R., Donnelly, C. P., Davidson, E. J., Parikh, E., Lopez, J. V., & Tartar, J. L. (2019). Gut microbiome diversity is associated with sleep physiology in humans. PloS one, 14(10), e0222394.