Research
Energy balance
Acute sleep deprivation increases plasma levels of specific acylcarnitines (medium- and long-chain saturated), suggesting altered fatty acid oxidation and potential links to fatigue or sleep signaling.
Staying awake for 24 hours increases specific fatty acid metabolites (acylcarnitines) in your blood, indicating your body is burning fat differently under sleep pressure. This metabolic shift may contribute to feelings of fatigue or changes in energy availability during sleep loss.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
During sleep deprivation, nine acylcarnitines had significantly increased levels compared with during the sleep period... These affected acylcarnitines were medium- and long-chain saturated acylcarnitines (C3, C5, C8, C9, C10, C12, C14, and C16:2-OH), pointing to possible changes in β-oxidation of fatty acids during sleep deprivation.
Why this rating
High-quality metabolomics data from a controlled lab study.
Source
Effect of sleep deprivation on the human metabolome
Sarah K. Davies et al. · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2014
DOI 10.1073/pnas.1402663111
crossover · n=12Cited 535×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
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