Research

Hormonal

Prior insufficient sleep significantly increases the number of genes that respond to subsequent acute total sleep deprivation, indicating an intensified stress response.

If you are already sleep-deprived, staying awake for an extra day (acute sleep loss) triggers a much larger inflammatory and stress response in your blood than if you were well-rested. This suggests that chronic sleep debt makes you biologically more sensitive to acute stressors.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Insufficient sleep... led to an increase in the number of genes that responded to subsequent total sleep deprivation from 122 to 856.
Carla S. Möller‐Levet et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2013

Why this rating

Robust crossover design with controlled constant routine protocol.

Source

Effects of insufficient sleep on circadian rhythmicity and expression amplitude of the human blood transcriptome

Carla S. Möller‐Levet et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2013

DOI 10.1073/pnas.1217154110

crossover · n=26Cited 578×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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