Hi there, it's Matt here, and a very warm welcome back to this podcast.

Often on this podcast, I speak about sleep for the brain and all the remarkable brain

benefits that sleep supports, and sleep very much is for the brain.

We've discussed the slow oscillations of the

cortex, the neuronal firing that consolidates memories, the emotional processing performed by

the limbic system. It's therefore a natural assumption. Sleep is a brain state, so the brain

must be running the show. That is, sleep is not only for the brain, but

conversely, it is the brain that controls sleep and the different types of sleep and how much

you get. I mean, what else could be controlling how much you sleep other than your brain?

Well, today, I'm going to reveal some fascinating new findings that have

made us realize a striking truth. There's another added control center of sleep, and it sits

within your gut. It turns out that trillions of microorganisms living in your digestive tract,

bacteria, fungi viruses, hold a certain amount of power over whether you sleep well or spend another night staring at the ceiling.

This is the story of how we discovered that the answer to better sleep might not be found

in a pill, a meditation app, or even in the brain itself,

but in the ecosystem that lives inside your intestines. For most of the 20th century, if you wanted

to understand sleep, you studied the brain. This made perfect sense. After all, sleep is a brain state, the EEG machines that measure brain waves during the brain. This made perfect sense. After all, sleep is a brain state. The EEG machines

that measure brain waves during sleep became the gold standard. We mapped the electrical

signatures of different sleep stages with the precision of cartographers charting new continents.

We identified the brain regions responsible for initiating

sleep, maintaining sleep, and waking us up. We built an entire scientific edifice on the assumption

that sleep was fundamentally a neurological phenomenon, a conversation the brain was having with itself. But here's the thing

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