There’s a new reason to go to bed on time: late nights, in addition to a multitude of health effects, may lead to obesity and diabetes.
Countless studies have shown the negative effects of sleep loss and sleep deprivation, but a new one from a Swedish team suggests that even one night of missed snoozing can have long-lasting effects on your genes.
The study, which points to specific “clock” genes—components of the circadian rhythm found throughout the body that act like tiny clocks to synchronize our internal master clock–in muscle and adipose tissues, suggests that a missed night of sleep throws our metabolism for a loop, and can lead to increased risks of obesity and diabetes.
That’s bad news for people like shift workers, who may take on the occasional overnight work for extra money, or the hourly employees who do night-time rotations on occasion.
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Jonathan Cedernaes, a neuroscientist at Uppsala University in Sweden and the lead author of the study, says there’s some precedent to believe that while negative effects come rather quickly, the switch back may not happen as fast. “It could certainly be the case that though they’re induced quickly, they’re not reversed [as] quickly.” He plans to look at whether shift work or other kinds of sleep loss paradigms have lasting effects that can be noticed by analyzing someone’s genome. In other words, the damage from those all-nighters in college or those cheap red-eye flights may already be done.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: Just one all-nighter can alter your genes, possibly for years to come
