A good night’s sleep begins with healthy gut bacteria. Here’s how to look after yours

It’s no accident that we spend a third of our lives asleep. It is essential to our health, and even animals for whom resting is complicated – such as aquatic mammals that need to surface to breathe, or birds that go up to 10 days without touching dry land – manage to sleep with surprising adaptations.

But while we sleep, the tens of trillions of microorganisms that live within us – known as the microbiota – follow their own rhythms. This microscopic colony,…

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