Scientists suspect a link between the digestive system and problems with sleep

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/mar/19/is-your-gut-keeping-you-awake-at-night

by devy • 8 years ago

159 68 8 years ago

I can vouch for this.

I have always had sleep issues and over a long period of time and experimenting, found that I could calm the bacteria by giving them the right amount of fiber and simple proteins to work on, while avoiding sugar. If I deprive them of nutrients, they release something into my blood that increases anxiety. I have yet to figure out what this chemical is.

I used to think it was a blood sugar problem, but after a lot of testing, determined my blood sugar was fine. It turns out that 700 trillion life forms in the gut can wreak havoc if they are not taken care of.

And to think ... I said I don't want any pets. Turns out, I have 700 trillion of them.

cpncrunch3• 8 years ago

Have you ruled out psychological factors (which are probably more likely)? It's impossible to know for sure without doing a placebo controlled trial on yourself.

I have found that removing HFCS from my diet (basically, fizzy pop) and eating probiotic yogurt seems to mostly cure my mild IBS. I still get IBS due to stress, but don't seem to get it during non-stressful daily life any more. Of course, it still could be the placebo effect...it's hard to know for sure. It never affected my sleep though. The only time I would get anxiety would be due to an imminent bowel movement.

cjbillington• 8 years ago

With the HFCS, maybe you have moderate fructose malabsorption. Something like 30% of people do, and reducing or eliminating fructose helps them.

LinuxBender5• 8 years ago

I have actually done extensive controlled tests on myself for a couple decades now. That is not to say I have all the facts. There are still many unknowns that I would like to eventually figure out, I just simply don't have the tools at my disposal and functional lab tests are time consuming.

lr4444lr• 8 years ago

Why impute that to the bacteria? Sugar consumption supposedly facilitates tryptophan transport in the absence of other competing amino acids, which in turn boosts serotonin. That effect might not necessarily show up in an insulin/blood sugar imbalance.

LinuxBender5• 8 years ago

That is a good point. I should add that I take about 75mg of each amino acid daily, plus extra l-glutamine a few hours later, as the abundance of l-glutamine blocks the absorption of the other amino acids. I do this early in the day, so more of them should have been processed by the evening time.

Vekz• 8 years ago

I have a similar experience. I thought it was blood sugar related as well and started dinner later. Through a food diary and experimentation. I found that I got best sleep results when I had a high fiber meal in the evening. Having a bowl of steel cut oatmeal in the evening has helped significantly. I have had good success with fibrous vegetable salads as well.

Jeff_Brown• 8 years ago

Morning oatmeal makes me intolerably sleepy. To think that that could be a feature, not a bug!

acct17714• 8 years ago

I normally avoid spouting off, but you seem like you're looking for an answer.

My reading indicates this is inflammation.

If the bacteria have nothing to eat, they eat you.

Inflammation is not always localized. It can move. And there's lot of indications that many neural problems (Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, etc) are inflammation-related.

andai• 8 years ago

What dietary changes can be made to reduce inflammation?

LinuxBender5• 8 years ago

This is one of my theories as well. Lending to that theory is eating chicken soup which has enzymes with anti-inflammatory properties appear to also reduce the symptoms, but that also introduces many other factors.

goldfeld3• 8 years ago

But they are not your pets.. you are their pet.

LinuxBender5• 8 years ago

Good point! I hope they take good care of me, since I am taking better care of them.

cpncrunch3• 8 years ago

The article doesn't present any evidence at all, it's all just speculation.

rainieri• 8 years ago

It's true. If you get parasites from a pet like a cat you'll find yourself waking up at around 5 AM every day.

Finnucane• 8 years ago

If you have a cat, you'll be waking up at 5 am every day.

stevenwoo2• 8 years ago

This one references a study of modern day hunter gatherers and hunter farmers and found no modern day sleeping issues of insomnia or intermittent sleep with no mention of diet, only finding some signals with hours of daylight and temperature.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/the-many...

trhway• 8 years ago

have just taken a SIBO breath test. First hand observed the rise of breath hydrogen and methane. The biological machinery is that [bad overgrown] bacteria in the gut produce the gas with some of the gas making into the blood and after that into the lungs. That rise as usual coincided with small attack of coughing, running nose and a bit of anxiety and loss of concentration (was trying to work during the 3hr test). When it happens at night, it does makes falling to sleep harder. Anyway, passed the test with flying colors :) - hit 78ppm hydrogen and 29ppm methane levels (at 40 and 60 minute marks, ie. before colonic response, etc) where 20ppm of either alone is already enough for SIBO diagnosis. So it isn't just imagination.

DoreenMichele• 8 years ago

Towards the end, this article has a bunch of random suggestions you could try. I will caution readers that randomly trying stuff is about the worst way to do this.

If you want to self experiment, at a minimum, start a food diary. Record what you eat, when you eat it and track any health metrics you hope to change, whether sleep or something else. Establish a baseline for your current normal. Then try no more than one new thing every week or two to establish whether it does anything and, if so, what effect it seems to have.

Supplements are easier to work with at the start because it is the best way to try to isolate a factor. Dietary changes are much harder to understand because they always involve at least two changes: the new food you are adding and the discontinuation of whatever you used to eat. This always leaves the question "Is the new food helping? Or is the effect from removing the old food?"

That's before getting into the issue that most things you eat are complicated products containing multiple ingredients.

iamcasen2• 8 years ago

Exactly. It's further complicated by the fact that you really need to stick to a change for 2 months or more to notice any lasting effects.

From what I've seen with folks struggling with SIBO and Candida among other things was that cutting out sugar completely is probably the first and easiest place to start. No sugar at all, especially added sugar like you might find in a pasta sauce or other store-bought foods. Do that for 3 months straight and then eat something with sugar after that. You'll probably feel sick.

nightfly• 8 years ago

cutting out sugar completely is probably the first and easiest place to start

This would represent a radical and complete change in diet in me and probably many other people. Since it would mean having to change from most cheap preprepared versions of common foods such as pasta sauce, like you mentioned, and even regular store-bought bread. These foods would either more considerably more expensive or time-intensive versions that don't include sugar, or replacing them with completely unlike foods.

It's in no way an "easy" change, and involves so much alteration that I doubt the significance of the "no sugar" component matters as much as the other collateral changes.

JoshMnem3• 8 years ago

I quit most sugar consumption a few years ago and can recommend it. I think it can also be beneficial to cut out all refined grains.

I reduced salt intake to a couple hundred milligrams per day last week, and I've barely noticed.

My main staples are lots of steamed vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds, fruit, and a little fish and brown rice. I also do some calorie restriction, and water fasting for 2-5 days at a time. I cook almost everything from scratch and do meal prep a couple of times per week to have quick access to healthy foods. Two years in, and I'm 65 pounds lighter and feeling satisfied with the meals.

besasam2• 8 years ago

When you say "no sugar at all, especially added sugar", do you include natural sugar in fruit (and some vegetables)?

goldfeld3• 8 years ago

How about being the most random and crazily modern scientifically suspecting you have in years: eat healthy and sleep better?

No daily coffee, no past-noon sugary snack, you know the other stuff. It's not brain science.

gt_• 8 years ago

I am experiencing basically this right now. I am otherwise usually very healthy but have been having digestive problems for about 6 months. I realized last month that my newfound sleep problems seem to correlate with my stomach upsets. It was not obvious but after realizing it, I got some meds from my doctor for my stomach problem and my sleep problems went away as well!

My doctor is trying to play things safe and actually had me do a barium swallow test at the hospital this morning. This required me to not take the stomach medication for a few days and sure enough the sleep problems came back!

One thing that freaks me out is I normally have a very healthy and balanced diet. Still not sure where the stomach problems are coming from.

cosmic_shame• 8 years ago

What medication were you prescribed?

throwawaysecops2• 8 years ago

Did a retreat. We ate at 6AM and 11AM. No food after Noon. Fasting for 18 hours a day, as we were designed. No stomach problems, felt great, real and regular.

Problem is, we eat a feast each and every night and were never meant to. Our success is killing us. Slowly and in a variety of horrific manners.

ubernostrum• 8 years ago

The natural state of humans in our early days may have involved the things you claim -- it's a tough claim to back up. But it almost certainly also involved a much shorter and more violent life than we enjoy today, when "our success is killing us".

taneq• 8 years ago

Our success is killing us. Slowly and in a variety of horrific manners.

As opposed to our 'natural state', which would kill us rapidly and in a variety of horrific manners.

keyle• 8 years ago

"as we were designed".

Sorry what does that mean? Do you think that 50 odd generations before us aren't changing our DNA with habit changes, while living in a different country for 2 years does?

Also we were designed?

throwawaysecops2• 8 years ago

Do you find asking stupid questions productive? Honestly curious about that one. Also, this question I ask is a leading one. Know the difference.

Design can be considered "doing" by an organism in its change for survivial. Our "doing" made us be efficient with food. It's not like it was laying around or something back when we evolved, like it is nowadays.

Doesn't matter if we have an excess of food laying around today, DNA-wise. It takes generations to evolve new organisms that can deal with glut or scarcity. We are evolved the way we are and unlike the dork who wants citation about it, you aren't going to get what you want just by demanding it.

Only doing will show the truth. Talking about it is pointless and counterproductive to the end goal of reality, which is basically the efficient search for interesting.

Angostura• 8 years ago

Fasting for 18 hours a day, as we were designed.

Is there any evidence for this at all, other than food was scarce? I can weave an equally compelling tale that as browsing hunter-gatherers we were eating pretty much constantly from the moment we woke to when we fell asleep, albeit in small quantities throughout the day.

gxs• 8 years ago

Can anyone recommend a good probiotic product?

There are tons of them, and the article doesn't really mention anything specifically.

wutbrodo• 8 years ago

Isn't just plain yogurt a pretty good probiotic? Or did you mean a pill with a live culture or something?

stevenwoo2• 8 years ago

I like mango lassi, but for less sugar one should try something like plain Greek yogurt or plain yogurt with probiotics and add fresh fruit for flavor and the fiber described in the article.

It's probably not so much important for a particular type as far as we know as just to get some and experiment with what you find palatable and convenient and works.

Most of the flavored yogurts have way too much added sugar for the average American diet.

deepnet• 8 years ago

Kefir - a symbiote that can get the probiotics through the stomach more effictively than yoghurt alone.

According to this BBC research http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38800977

calinet6• 8 years ago

There are so many.

My self-treatment for suspected SIBO and diagnosed Microscopic Colitis is Pepto Bismol Max (1 dose) followed by a strong probiotic 12 hours later. The probiotic I've had success with is this one: https://www.renewlife.com/ultimate-flora-extra-care-probioti...

I really can't back this up, it's just the only thing that works for me consistently. That and meditation and yoga to help get the anxiety under control.

But (if you'll allow me to digress) the anxiety is most definitely influenced more by the state of the gut than other factors, in my experience; particularly (as in the original post) if I'm hungry or haven't "fed the bacteria." Anxiety spikes off the charts until I eat some simple proteins and it makes it past my stomach. The first grumble of the stomach emptying, and the anxiety disappears; I feel entirely normal again instantly, no joke. I realize that's weird, but it's my clear cut experience. Back to the medical pinball machine with me...

adrianN• 8 years ago

It's probably a good idea to eat a variety of fermented foods, not just a single "good" probiotic product.

theprotocol• 8 years ago

FYI- if you get worse after taking probiotics and you rule out die-off symptoms, consider that probiotics produce gas and histamines.

I find that limiting all microbial growth, including that of "good" bacteria, is the only thing that improves my symptoms. This means eliminating all things fermentable (resistant starches, "prebiotics," FOS, FODMAPs).

Lewton2• 8 years ago

VSL#3 seems to be one of the few probiotic products with enough bacteria in it to actually make a difference.

I seem to have used it with some success in calming down a bout of very nasty Rosacea that -might- have been SIBO related.

Purely anecdotal, one of the worst parts about Rosacea is that it literally changes with the wind (weather can have a huge effect), so tracking what works or not is really hard.

hyencomper• 8 years ago

While researching probiotics I came across a recent study that has found increased obesity in response to VSL #3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29493105. While I do not have any details on the study methodology, I think it is best to be cautious while trying out supplements.

fitzroy• 8 years ago

I've used these and they're good. Their digestive enzymes are good as well. I wouldn't trust any of non-refrigerated grocery store brands. http://www.giprohealth.com/probiotics.aspx

You can also get Rx probiotics from a pharmacy (in single use packets). I think they are pretty expensive without insurance though (around $250 for a month's worth) but may be cheaper than the above if you only have a co-pay.

You can also make your own yogurt. Letting the yogurt ferment a full 24 hours instead of 4 to 8 produces a lot more of the probiotics and reduces the amount of lactic acid left, but can be a pain to make (normal yogurt makers will usually overheat).

eli_gottlieb• 8 years ago

Well, the "weight" on the parasympathetic nervous system is important for sleep and other low-arousal states so... uh... yeah? I guess?

AnatMl2• 8 years ago

I've been experimenting for the last couple of months and tried almost everything, what's suggested in the article. The best option for me was not eating for a couple of hours before the bedtime and no sports (even the relaxing yoga would keep me awake). Although it is individual and I have to agree with the food diary suggestions: it is the best way to find out how your body reacts to the specific foods.

foxyv• 8 years ago

I used to have trouble sleeping then I found the secret that works best for my body/brain. An hour on my bicycle riding up to the lake and I'll sleep like a log. The hard part is not falling asleep after my ride.

No exercise and I don't get good sleep and have stomach and anxiety problems. Go figure.

ohiovr• 8 years ago

My gut is telling me it is time to consume about 500 calories just like my medicine literature says I should have done before I took it. If I don't eat I will have to listen to my gut churning and growling all night long.

Scientists suspect a link between the digestive system and problems with sleep

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