Sleep

Getting a good night’s sleep has many positive health benefits, from repairing your DNA and increasing your antioxidants, to possibly slowing the ageing process.

But do our genes actually dictate how well we sleep?

The short answer is yes. They dictate as to whether you are a morning person or a night owl, the duration of sleep, if your sleep is fragmented and if stress will affect you sleeping well.

For instance, stress and sleep can be the perfect chicken and the egg scenario. Having continuous stress will have a negative effect on your sleep quality and having poor quality sleep will increase your stress levels.

There are a variety of factors which affect our health, one which is currently being studied is the effect of sleep and our circadian rhythm. Our circadian rhythm is thought to regulate around 15-20% of our genome and is tremendously important to keeping us fit and healthy as it affects our hormones, eating habits and reduces the chances of us becoming ill.

Our diet also has huge connotations for how well we sleep. For instance, the “sleep hormone” melatonin, is responsible for signalling darkness to the body and regulating daily physiological rhythms, which are dramatically affected by retinol (Vitamin A)

Studies have shown high levels of retinol in the mammalian pineal gland and vitamin A deficiency causes a reduction in gene AANAT, which will reduce melatonin levels.

This might also be a problem if you are following a plant based/vegan diet as retinol is just one of many nutrients that you cannot obtain healthy levels without animal-based foods.

We can covert a small amount of retinol from beta-carotene, but depending on your genetic variation of gene BCO1, this will affect your ability to convert beta-carotene from plants into retinol effectively.

During our sleep is also when we repair damage to our DNA. One of the ways that this is done is by releasing melatonin, which is inhibited by blue light during the day and hindered when we use our phones, laptops, and tablets at night, and regulates over 500 genes that are involved in repair and antioxidant function.

Sleep 😴 and Ageing 🧬

What actually happens whilst we sleep that enhances everything that we do and becomes some kind of elixir to our health and longevity?

Muhdo Health have been analysing the data from 1000s of people. Then using this data to show lifestyle interventions that may increase longevity and reduce pathology risk through the power of genotyping and DNA methylation.

The following looks at the average sleep data on 475 individuals and how sleep patterns correlate with the biological clock (epigenetic clock) as measured through 400~ CG sites across genes affecting longevity and other metrics. (Data sets on request).

Quality sleep of less than 4 hours per night

> Increases biological age on average 2.2 years 🧬
> Increases the expression of the gene FTO which may increase obesity risk (AVE 0.7 on 3 sites)
> Negatively alters the methylation on genes associated with dementia 🧠
> Correlates with perceived increased daily anxiety 😢
> Decreased protein synthesis 👎
> Increases inflammation (cytokine encoding gene expression) 🔥

Quality sleep of 4 – 6 hours per night

> No significant impact on biological age 🧬
> Increases the expression of the gene FTO which may increase obesity risk (AVE 0.58 on 3 sites)
> Negatively alters the methylation on genes associated with dementia 🧠
> Does not correlate with perceived increased daily anxiety 😊
> Increased protein synthesis 🏋‍♀️
> No effect on inflammation (cytokine encoding gene expression)

Quality sleep of 6 – 8 hours per night

> Decelerated biological age on average -1.6 years 🧬
> No altered expression on FTO
> No effect on dementia genes 🧠
> Does not correlate with perceived increased daily anxiety 😊
> Increased protein synthesis 🏋‍♀️
> No effect on inflammation (cytokine encoding gene expression)

Quality sleep of 8+ hours per night

> No significant impact on biological age 🧬
> No altered expression on FTO
> No effect on dementia genes 🧠
> Does not correlate with perceived increased daily anxiety 😊
> Increased protein synthesis 🏋‍♀️
> No effect on inflammation (cytokine encoding gene expression)