If you’ve been tested for something and you’ve been told that the
results were “off”, you might do yourself a huge favour if you asked to be
re-tested, especially, I’d suggest in circumstances were the end result of the
abnormal test results is a recommendation to take some drugs, most of which,
these days, you end up taking for the rest of your life.
And when you get re-tested, do it when you’ve had some adequate sleep.
In a terrific small study, researchers measured some metabolic test
results in a group of healthy well-rested volunteers, and then re-measured
those metabolic tests when the volunteers had been subjected to some intense
sleep deprivation.
And what they found is that the results of many tests varied according
to how well-rested the volunteers had been.
In other words, not getting enough sleep can affect some test results.
But I’m sure that so can what we eat (about which we have precious
little data), how stressed we are, and several other factors that we know
nothing about.
Moral of this study: If you’re gonna get tested for something –
anything – you’d be best to be well rested (and I’d add: probably as
stress-reduced as you can get, too).
