Chronically poor sleep can leave you sluggish and grouchy. It has also been linked to a range of health concerns, including mood disorders and chronic illnesses, such as inflammatory bowel diseases, type 2 diabetes, and hypertension.
As if that’s not bad enough, irregular or insufficient shuteye can also sabotage your gut health and lead to serious digestive issues.
A new study involving lab mice, published in Cell Stem Cell, unveils how this chain reaction may work: Disturbed sleep prompts the brain to send warning signals via the vagus nerve to the intestines. This lack of sleep ultimately causes oxidative stress to the stem cells charged with renewing the gut lining and keeping it healthy.
“When sleep signals go awry, the gut essentially pays the price.”
“When sleep signals go awry, the gut essentially pays the price,” says study coauthor Maksim Plikus, PhD, professor of developmental and cell biology at the University of California, Irvine. “We were surprised to see how precisely the brain communicates sleep defects to intestinal stem cells. This helps explain why chronic sleep disruption can make the gut more fragile and prone to disease.”
The results reinforce just how interconnected and interdependent organs, tissues, and cells are in the body, Plikus says. “Normally, the vagus nerve is a major conduit for physiological information between the brain and the gut when we are healthy and everything is functioning normally. It is quite reasonable that the same conduit will pass pathological information as well.”
Consider your gut health one more reason to commit to good sleep hygiene. (For advice on getting a good night’s sleep, see “Why Quality Sleep Matters — and What to Do When You’re Not Getting It.”)
This article originally appeared as “Muscle: Your Superpower for Longevity” in the September/October 2026 issue of Experience Life.
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