Adding to the myriad health problems associated with insufficient sleep, British researchers have found that losing sleep at night can hamper the activity of genes in the human body.
Scientists at the University of Surrey in England monitored 26 adults after a week of fewer than six hours of sleep a night and concluded that even as little as a week of sleep loss can reduce gene activity, weaken the immune system and disrupt a person’s natural body clock.
The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Feb. 25.
