Snug with your bugs? How microbes control your sleep...

The bacteria living in your guts and mouths could be controlling how you sleep at night.
Now scientists want to use them to help you rest better.

As you lie in bed tonight, your body will be a teeming mass of activity.
Across almost every inch of your body – and inside it too – billions of tiny organisms are writhing and jostling for space.
But if that horrifying thought is likely to keep you up at night, consider this:
they might also help you get a better night's sleep.

Emerging research suggests that the communities of bacteria, viruses and fungi that make up
our body's microbiota can influence our sleep. Depending on the composition of our personal microbial ecosystem,
the amount of shut eye we get can either improve or deteriorate.

And tantalisingly, it could offer new ways of tackling sleep-related conditions caused by a disrupted body clock,
described by sleep scientists as circadian rhythms.
While many people currently rely on sleeping pills to quell persistent insomnia,
the future might see friendly bacteria deployed to help us nod off, and even address obstructive sleep apnoea,
a condition in which people struggle to breathe normally while asleep.
It would bring new meaning to the term sleep hygiene.

The predominant theory for a long time has been that having sleep disorders is disruptive to our microbiomes,
says Jennifer Martin, a University of California Los Angeles professor and board member of the American Academy
of Sleep Medicine. But some of the evidence we're seeing now indicates that
it's probably a relationship that goes in both directions.