Matthew Walker on health: what the evidence says · JRE #1109
“The first was that a sizable 711 jeans with distorted in their activity caused by one week of 6 hours of sleep.”
What the evidence says
Walker's figure references a 2013 study by Moller-Levet and colleagues, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which tracked 26 participants through one week of sleep restriction (about 5.7 hours per night) and one week of sufficient sleep (about 8.5 hours per night). Blood transcriptome analysis found that 711 genes were significantly up- or down-regulated after the week of insufficient sleep compared to the week of sufficient sleep, matching the number Walker cites. The affected genes were linked to circadian rhythm regulation, immune and inflammatory responses, oxidative stress, and metabolism. The study has not been retracted and has been cited in hundreds of subsequent papers. Its main limitation is a small sample size (n=26) typical of intensive laboratory sleep studies, which affects how broadly the specific gene list generalizes but does not undermine the reported topline number.