The Mouth After Midnight: Nocturnal Wakefulness and Eating Behavior

Abstract

Sleep is a biological requirement for human life and is patterned by homeostatic and circadian factors. How much sleep an individual achieves, however, is influenced by multiple variables at the individual, social, and societal levels. Some individuals are uniquely vulnerable to sleep loss, including shiftworkers who experience chronic circadian misalignment. These individuals must attempt sleep during the biological day when there is a circadian drive for wakefulness and engage in activity and eating behavior during the biological night when there is a drive for quiescence and fasting. Circadian misalignment is associated with cardiometabolic dysfunction and disease. It can cause perturbations in energy balance and neural circuits involved in homeostatic and hedonic feeding. It has been unclear, to date, whether nocturnal wakefulness promotes addictive-like eating behavior in individuals without otherwise disordered eating. Guided by our group’s “Mind After Midnight” hypothesis, this research will highlight findings from secondary analyses exploring sleep quality and dietary patterns, nocturnal wakefulness, and macronutrient intake, and finally, an experimental pilot study which sought to preliminary explore the effects of nocturnal wakefulness on eating behavior in a cohort of young adults. This dissertation concludes with the implications of these findings, along with future goals for this program of research.