A new study from the Department of Child Rehabilitation in China demonstrates that there exists a highly significant variation in the gut microbiota of children who sleep using early bedtime and those who use late bedtime.
The research addressed to focus on the issue of whether children posses a rich and diverse gut microbiome as compared to children who go to bed late. There were many other good bacteria or early sleepers including Akkermansia muciniphila that were present in this race.
Most of them are believed to be beneficial for gut health, and are also found in individuals with right brain dominance. The findings of this current study demonstrate that sleep particularly in early childhood, is beneficial to memorizing letters and numbers, other forms of learning, physical health, and even BMI levels.
Thus the present study sought to establish sleep-microbiota-gut health relationship in children. The study population comprised of Fecal samples of reportedly healthy 2-14 years old children. Their findings appeared in the journal Scientific Reports under the title “Characteristics of gut flora in children who go to bed early versus late.” To do this, the children were classified into two groups depending on their bedtimes, prior to 9.30 p.m. or after 9.30 pm respectively.
Prior to the conclusion of the two-week period marked for the study, participants filled in a sleep diary that included bedtime, time taken to fall asleep, number of awakenings at night, nocturnal efficacy and overall weight of sleep.
An analysis of gut microbiome showed that children who slept at early hours were found to have been harboured by large number of positive gut bacteria.
Furthermore, we observed that Akkermansia muciniphila was increased in the early to bed group.
The other detected high bacteria among early sleepers are Holdemia filiformis, Firmicutes bacterium CAG- 95, Streptococcus sp. A12, Weissella confusa Clostridium sp. CAG 253, Alistipes finegoldii and Eubacterium siraeum. Moreover, there was higher quantity of CAG-83 fungi in the early bedtime group. At the phyla and genus level, Verrucomicrobia, Akkermansia, Holdemania and Firmicutes not assigned to a specific genus were more abundant in the early sleep group.
Pearson correlation coefficients were computed and calculated between sleep metrics and different microbial species; the results showed that Akkermansia muciniphila and Alistipes finegoldii were significantly with the time required to fall asleep. Clostridium/CO2 ratio CAG-253 was down-regulated with sleep onset latency.
Alistipes finegoldii was directly related to TST, but inversely related to dream density and SE. Importantly, a negative association was noted between Alistipes finegoldii, Akkermansia muciniphila as well as Holdemania filiformis and sleep quality.
In those who sleep early, there were distinct changes in metabolic activity in metabolomics of amino acids and regulation of neurotransmitters. These trends are crucial for an active and developing brain mass and one tends to think there is a connection between the gut health and brain functionality.
As Mizuno et al. state in their manuscript, the noticeable metabolic differences and diversity in species suggests that the patterns of sleep must also have some effects on the gut microbiota.
Based on the findings of our research first of all we can firstly hope that new pharmacological intercessions of sleep disorders in children will emerge. The possibility could be they are connecting results of microbiome with sleep cycles or in contrast where cycles of sleep are dictated by the microbiome.
Children in the first scenario of the study maintained their own natural sleep – wake pattern, that is, actual, natural glorious bed times without any interference by the experimenters. These correlations have great potential to be followed up in multiple directions more precisely to define causal pathways that underlie sleep-gut improvement’s cognitive connection.
Reference : Chunmei Mao et al, Characteristics of gut flora in children who go to bed early versus late, Scientific Reports (2024).Â
