Sleep and Eating Behavior in Adults at Risk for Type 2 Diabetes

Insufficient quantity and quality of sleep may modulate eating behavior, everyday physical activity, overall energy balance, and individual risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes. We examined the association of habitual sleep quantity and quality with the self-reported pattern of eating behavior in 53 healthy urban adults with parental history of type 2 diabetes (30 F/23 M; mean (s.d.) age: 27 (4) years; BMI: 23.9 (2.3) kg/m(2)) while taking into consideration the amount of their everyday physical activity. Participants completed 13 (3) days of sleep and physical activity monitoring by wrist actigraphy and waist accelerometry while following their usual lifestyle at home. Overnight laboratory polysomnography was used to screen for sleep disorders. Subjective sleep quality was measured with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. Eating behavior was assessed using the original 51-item and the revised 18-item version of the Three-Factor Eating Questionnaire including measures of cognitive restraint, disinhibition, hunger, and uncontrolled and emotional eating. In multivariable regression analyses adjusted for age, BMI, gender, race/ethnicity, level of education, habitual sleep time measured by wrist actigraphy and physical activity measured by waist accelerometry, lower subjective sleep quality was associated with increased hunger, more disinhibited, uncontrolled and emotional eating, and higher cognitive restraint. There was no significant association between the amount of sleep measured by wrist actigraphy and any of these eating behavior factors. Our findings indicate that small decrements in self-reported sleep quality can be a sensitive indicator for the presence of potentially problematic eating patterns in healthy urban adults with familial risk for type 2 diabetes.