Study links less sleep and sugar-sweetened drink consumption

People who sleep five or fewer hours a night are likely to also drink significantly more sugary caffeinated drinks, a US study of 18000 adults shows.

It’s not yet clear whether drinking sugar-sweetened beverages causes people to sleep less, or whether sleep deprivation makes people seek out more sugar and caffeine to stay awake, according to the study published in Sleep Health.

“We think there may be a positive feedback loop where sugary drinks and sleep loss reinforce one another, making it harder for people to eliminate their unhealthy sugar habit,” lead author and University of California San Francisco assistant professor of psychiatry Aric A Prather says in a press release.

“This data suggests that improving people’s sleep could potentially help them break out of the cycle and cut down on their sugar intake, which we know to be linked to metabolic disease,” he says.

The study will be included in the December 2016 issue of Sleep Health.

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