New Pathways From Short Sleep to Obesity? Associations Between Short Sleep and "Secondary" Eating and Drinking Behavior

Purpose: The association between short sleep and obesity risk is well established. However, we explore a new pathway between short sleep and obesity: whether short sleep is linked to more time spent in secondary eating or drinking, that is, eating or drinking (beverages other than water, such as sugar-sweetened beverages) while primarily engaged in another activity, such as television watching.

Design: This pooled cross-sectional study uses data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) from 2006 to 2008.

Setting: The study takes place in the United States.

Subjects: Subjects are 28,150 adults (55.8% female) aged 21 to 65 who were surveyed in the ATUS.

Measures: Outcomes are time spent on (1) secondary eating and drinking and (2) primary eating and drinking. Our main predictor variable is sleep duration.

Analysis: Controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the respondents, we estimate multivariate regression-analysis models for the full sample, as well as by weekday/weekend status, race, and gender subgroups.

Results: In multivariate models, compared to respondents reporting normal sleep, short sleep was associated with additional 8.7 (SE = 2.1) minutes per day of secondary eating (p < .01) and additional 28.6 (SE = 4.2) and 31.28 (SE = 5.0) minutes per day of secondary drinking on weekdays and weekends, respectively (p < .01).

Conclusions: We find that short sleep is associated with more time spent in secondary eating and, in particular, secondary drinking. This potentially suggests a pathway from short sleep to increased caloric intake in the form of beverages and distracted eating and thus potential increased obesity risk, although more research is needed.