You're listening to Bulletproof Rady with Dave Asprey.

Today's cool fact of the day is that a lack of sleep can induce anxiety.

In healthy adults, well at least they said they were healthy, overnight sleep deprivation

triggered anxiety the next morning, along with altered brain activity patterns.

People with anxiety disorders often have trouble sleeping, and these new results show the

reverse effects that poor sleep when you have it can induce anxiety.

This came out of UC Berkeley, and they looked at 18 people following either a night of

sleep or a night of staying awake, they did anxiety test the next morning.

Sleep deprivation led to 30% more anxiety than people who slept.

And the anxiety scores reached levels of people who have anxiety disorders.

And sleep deprived people's brain activity changed too.

So when they looked at emotional videos, brain areas involved in emotions were more active,

the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the thing that helps you think and pay attention

and sort of be a thinking human.

It's also the part that slows down your anxiety.

That part was less active, and this is a current functional MRI scans.

So poor sleep isn't just a symptom of anxiety, but maybe it's a cause.

And that is a definite call to hack your own sleep, which is particularly important.

Something that wasn't in the study that's really interesting too is that your gut bacteria

also have their own separate circadian rhythm.

So when you stay up all night or you're jet lagged, your gut bacteria are also jet lagged,

and when they get pissed off, guess what they do.

...