Meal timing and subjective sleep disturbances in older men

Abstract

Older adults often complain about sleep disturbances, such as difficulty falling asleep and difficulty maintaining sleep in the early morning hours. Here, we investigated whether meal timing is associated with sleep problems in a cohort of older Swedish men (n = 998, mean age 71). Each participant filled out a seven-day food diary used to determine the daily eating time window, daily eating midpoint, and meal timing variability (i.e., the variance in daily eating midpoints over seven days). Questionnaires were used to assess difficulty initiating sleep and difficulty maintaining sleep. As indicated by logistic regression adjusted for potential confounders (e.g., BMI, diabetes status), no significant associations were found between the meal timing parameters and subjective sleep problems (P ≥ 0.37). Similar results were obtained when restricting the analysis to adequate reporters of daily energy intake. Therefore, our findings suggest that meal timing variations do not contribute to subjective sleep problems in older men. Our results must be replicated in cohorts that also include women and other measures of sleep.

Keywords: Aging; Chrononutrition; Elderly; Insomnia; Sleep disturbances.