Diet-Sleep Interaction on Cardiometabolic Health

Poor dietary and sleep habits are well-established risk factors for adverse cardiometabolic health, including obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Furthermore, emerging physiological evidence has suggested the bi-directional relationship between diet and sleep. While some foods may increase the availability of tryptophan or enhance the synthesis of serotonin and melatonin, poor sleep may relate to unhealthy diet by hormone dysregulation, increased sensitivity to food reward, greater time opportunity, and impaired decision making. However, diet and sleep are usually treated as separate lifestyle factors for evaluating the association with health outcomes. Without targeting both lifestyle factors simultaneously, researchers may overlook their additive benefits in cardiometabolic health, particularly when implementing lifestyle interventions.

The goal of this Research Topic is to summarize the recent advances on the interactive effects of diet (e.g. nutrients, food groups or dietary patterns) and sleep (e.g. sleep duration, quality or disorder) on cardiometabolic health via a wide range of research studies. First, we look forward to studies that examine the mechanisms of poor diet and sleep on developing cardiometabolic diseases. If diet and sleep can influence human health through the similar targets, can they provide synergistic effects on health improvement? Can healthier diet ameliorate the adverse impacts of poor sleep, or vice versa? In addition to the physiological evidence, epidemiological studies that utilize contemporary statistical approaches to construct the relation between diet, sleep, and cardiometabolic risk are also necessary. Finally, intervention studies can provide rigorous evidence on how lifestyle changes can be translated into the reduction of cardiometabolic risk, and whether the efficacy is substantially better when diet and sleep modification are combined rather than improving one of them only.

This Research Topic welcomes multiple types of human studies, namely observational studies, intervention studies, systematic reviews and meta-analysis. The mediating or moderating effect of dietary (or sleep) habits in the relationship with obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and metabolic syndrome across diverse age groups and ethnicities are of interest, as well as identifying the common physiological pathways of diet and sleep (e.g. through gut microbiome composition or related metabolites) in disease etiology. In addition, this Research Topic welcomes intervention studies that evaluate the efficacy of targeting both diet and sleep simultaneously within lifestyle interventions. By including a variety of recent advances, this collection is expected to provide influential findings to research community, health practitioners and policy makers.