Reprogramming the gut microbiome with fecal microbiota transplants could reduce the amount of time people with insomnia spend awake.<\/p>\n
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here\u2019s how it works.<\/p>\n
A poop transplant \u2014 otherwise known as a fecal microbiota transplant (FMT) \u2014 may help adults with long-term insomnia sleep better, a small study suggests.<\/p>\n
After the transplant, study participants' gut bacteria became more diverse than an untreated group of people with insomnia. Their sleep efficiency, meaning the percentage of time they spent asleep while in bed, also increased, researchers reported July 22 in the Journal of Internal Medicine.<\/p>\n
If future studies confirm that FMT is safe and effective for the treatment of insomnia, it could become another tool against the sleep disorder, joining sleeping pills and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).<\/p>\n
The findings "are aligned with a recent body of work over the last five years indicating that the gut microbiome may play a role in sleep-wake regulation," said Dr. David Gozal, a pediatric sleep specialist at Marshall University in West Virginia who wasn't involved in this study.<\/p>\n
However, "these results should be regarded as promising proof-of-concept evidence rather than confirmation that FMT is ready for routine treatment of insomnia," Kenji Hashimoto, a forensic mental health researcher at Chiba University in China who wasn't involved with the study, told Live Science in an email.<\/p>\n
The study included 80 adult women and men with chronic insomnia from seven hospitals in China; the participants did not have other health problems, such as migraine or obstructive sleep apnea, that could interfere with the results.<\/p>\n
Half of the participants took antibiotics for two days to clear out some of their existing gut bacteria. Then, they swallowed 60 FMT capsules chockfull of gut bacteria from healthy donors who had been confirmed to be good sleepers. These bacteria were isolated from fecal samples from the donors. Two weeks later, this group took a booster dose of 20 capsules.<\/p>\n
Get the world\u2019s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n
The other half of the participants instead took placebo pills in place of the antibiotics and FMT capsules.<\/p>\n
The researchers used an overnight sleep assessment called a polysomnography, which records brain waves, eye movements, heart rate, oxygen levels and breathing patterns, to assess the participants. The results showed that sleep efficiency in the FMT group jumped from 79% before the transplant to 93% one month after treatment, on average. The placebo group's sleep efficiency barely changed, shifting from about 85% to 87%.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the treated group woke up less throughout the night. Their time spent awake after initially falling asleep fell from 79 to 17 minutes, while the same metric increased from 37 to 42 minutes in the placebo group.<\/p>\n
On questionnaires, the FMT group continued reporting better sleep from two all the way to six months after treatment.<\/p>\n
It is "encouraging" that FMT treatment seemed to improve sleep not only on objective tests, but also in how the participants themselves rated their insomnia, added Harri\u00ebt Schellekens, a neuroscientist and microbiome researcher at University College Cork in Ireland, who wasn't involved in the work.<\/p>\n