Session Schedule

Find a specific presentation in the session by navigating to the timestamp indicated below.

0:00:00
Introduction

0:00:38
Eat, sleep, two-way street? Unravelling the reciprocal dynamics between sleep and eating using preclinical animal models
Joel S Raymond (United States)

0:22:24
From plate to pillow: How eating behaviours and sleep influence each other
Marie-Pierre St-Onge (United States)

0:41:15
The effect of circadian disruption on eating behaviour, dietary intake, and metabolic outcomes in night shift working populations
Maxine Bonham (Australia)

1:03:20
Chrononutrition as a shared determinant of poor sleep and obesity in adolescents: Insights from the Teen Sleep Well Study
Emma Louise Gale (United Kingdom)

1:20:10
Question and answer

Summary

The adage ‘eat, sleep, repeat’ is often aptly used to reduce everyday life down to meeting some of our most basic biological needs—eating and sleeping. However, these two fundamental processes do not occur independently. Rather, sleep and eating are interconnected processes that reciprocally influence each other; sleep (duration, quality, and circadian timing) impacts eating behavior and metabolic outcomes, and similarly, eating behavior's (duration, quality, and circadian timing) impact sleep outcomes. These dynamic interactions between sleep and eating—for better or worse—shape the health of individuals with and without disordered sleep and/or eating. This symposium brings together four experts in sleep, circadian rhythms, and nutrition—both early-career and senior scientists—from three different continents to present novel and unpublished basic and clinical research examining the reciprocal interplay between sleep/circadian rhythms, eating behaviors, and metabolic consequences. Emphasis will be given to the implications of these findings for health and treatments for disordered sleep and eating. The first presentation (Raymond) will expose the bidirectional dynamic between sleep and eating from a neurobehavioral perspective using evidence from animal models. New findings indicate that acute sleep deprivation modulates motivation for food rewards, and that intermittent access to palatable food (i.e., binge-like eating) produces sleep and circadian disturbances in rats as assessed by polysomnography—supporting a reciprocal sleep-eating relationship. The second presentation (St-Onge) will provide a complementary and translational clinical perspective of the reciprocal sleep-eating dynamic using evidence from clinical intervention studies and epidemiological studies. Results indicate that insufficient sleep impacts food intake from a behavioral perspective (eating choices) and interacts with eating behavior traits, and that eating behaviors (timing of meals and food choices) also influence sleep outcomes. The third presentation (Gale) will elaborate on the role of chrono nutrition—the timing and quality of food consumption—as a shared determinant of poor sleep and obesity in adolescents by drawing on mixed-methods findings from the Teen Sleep Well Study of adolescents and their caregivers. Findings highlight the behavioral, social, and environmental factors shaping interactions between eating, sleep, and metabolic outcomes, and evidence-based strategies to promote healthier eating and sleep habits in adolescents will be discussed. The final presentation (Bonham) will delve deeper into dietary behaviors and diet quality of night shift-working populations—individuals whose critical jobs necessitate circadian rhythm misalignment with standard light-dark hours. Differences in dietary intake between day workers and night shift workers, the effect of shift schedule, adherence to dietary guidelines, and enablers/barriers to eating well on night shift work will be discussed. Further, using both clinical and observational data, the consequences of mistimed eating on metabolic health outcomes and the speed at which metabolic health starts to deteriorate in shiftwork naïve paramedics will be examined. Collectively, these presentations are intended to (I) generate interest and further research into the intersection of sleep, circadian rhythms, and eating, (ii) highlight the translational nature of existing evidence for this reciprocal sleep-eating dynamic, and (iii) ultimately, advance general and clinical care by recognizing eating as a critical determinant of good sleep and circadian health.