Aspects of the Relationship Between Sleep and Nutrition: A Study of 375 Psychiatric Out-Patients

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Abstract
An hypothesis has been tested that sleep patterns, especially in the second half of the night, in patients presenting with a variety of psychiatric disorders and with disorders of weight such as anorexia nervosa or obesity are related to nutritional factors that transcend specific diagnostic and mood states. The present report concerns a population of 375 consecutive new patient referrals to a psychiatric out-patient clinic investigated by standardized measures of aspects of their sleep, weight, level of nutrition, and psychiatric and mood states. A general finding has emerged of a relationship between weight loss, reduced duration of sleep, more broken sleep and early waking on the one hand, and weight gain, longer duration of sleep, no broken sleep and later waking on the other hand. This finding holds for states of severe depression and sadness as well as other diagnostic categories. Weight changes bore no such direct relationship to the time of getting off to sleep, which is found to be more closely related to mood states. However, major change in body shape is also found to be related to time of getting off to sleep. The overall results lend further support to the hypothesis, and it is suggested that nutritional factors may sometimes contribute to sleep disturbance presenting in a variety of disorders seen in the clinic.

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