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Behavior, Psychology and Sociology

Sleep duration and body mass: direction of the associations from adolescence to young adulthood

International Journal of Obesity volume 44, pages 852–856 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Research suggests that sleep duration and obesity are related, but the direction of this association remains uncertain. We applied autoregressive cross-lag models to evaluate the directionality of the relationship between sleep duration and BMI from adolescence through emerging and young adulthood, life stages where the risk for developing obesity are particularly high. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), we examined sex-stratified associations between sleep duration and BMI in this cohort from adolescence (ages 12–18, year 1996), to emerging adulthood (ages 18–24, 2001–2002), to young adulthood (ages 24–32, 2008), controlling for key confounders. For both males and females, higher BMI during an earlier developmental stage was associated with shorter sleep duration in the subsequent stage (both Bs = −0.02, ps < 0.01). However, sleep duration at an earlier developmental stage was not associated with BMI at the subsequent stage. Findings suggest that researchers should be cautious when interpreting cross-sectional relationships between sleep and BMI, as higher BMI may precede shorter sleep during adolescence to young adulthood. Researchers may also wish to account for potential bi-directional associations when modeling sleep and BMI using longitudinal data.

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Acknowledgements

This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website. No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, 1415 Washington Heights, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109-2029, USA

    Rebeccah L. Sokol

  2. Harvard Center for Population and Developmental Studies, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, 9 Box Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Anna H. Grummon

  3. Department of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, 135 Dauer Drive, 302 Rosenau Hall, CB #7440, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599, USA

    Leslie A. Lytle

  4. Department of Nutrition, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, 135 Dauer Drive, 245 Rosenau Hall, CB #7461, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599, USA

    Leslie A. Lytle

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  1. Rebeccah L. Sokol
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  2. Anna H. Grummon
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  3. Leslie A. Lytle
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Correspondence to Rebeccah L. Sokol.

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Conflict of interest

General support and training support for AHG were provided by the Carolina Population Center (P2C HD050924, T32 HD007168) and training support for RLS was provided by the Carolina Consortium for Human Development (T32 HD07376). The funders had no role in the study design; collection, analysis, or interpretation of the data; writing of this report; or decision to submit the manuscript. LAL declares that he has no conflict of interest.

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Sokol, R.L., Grummon, A.H. & Lytle, L.A. Sleep duration and body mass: direction of the associations from adolescence to young adulthood. Int J Obes 44, 852–856 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41366-019-0462-5

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