Older adults often complain about sleep disturbances, such as difficulty falling asleep and difficulty maintaining sleep in the early morning hours. Here, we investigated whether meal timing is associated with sleep problems in a cohort of older Swedish men (n = 998, mean age 71). Each participant filled out a seven-day food diary used to determine the daily eating time window, daily eating midpoint, and meal timing variability (i.e., the variance in daily eating midpoints over seven days). Questionnaires were used to assess difficulty initiating sleep and difficulty maintaining sleep. As indicated by logistic regression adjusted for potential confounders (e.g., BMI, diabetes status), no significant associations were found between the meal timing parameters and subjective sleep problems (P ≥ 0.37). Similar results were obtained when restricting the analysis to adequate reporters of daily energy intake. Therefore, our findings suggest that meal timing variations do not contribute to subjective sleep problems in older men. Our results must be replicated in cohorts that also include women and other measures of sleep.

老年人经常抱怨睡眠障碍，例如难以入睡和难以在清晨保持睡眠。在这里，我们调查了一组瑞典老年人（n = 998，平均年龄71岁）中进餐时间是否与睡眠问题有关。每个参与者填写一份为期7天的食物日记，用于确定每日进食时间窗，每日进食中点和进餐时间的可变性（即7天内每日进食中点的变化）。问卷被用来评估难以入睡和难以维持睡眠的困难。正如针对潜在混杂因素（例如，BMI，糖尿病状况）进行的逻辑回归所表明的，就餐时间参数与主观睡眠问题之间未发现显着关联（P≥0.37）。将分析限制在每日能量摄入的适当报告者上时，可获得类似的结果。因此，我们的发现表明，进餐时间的变化不会导致老年男性的主观睡眠问题。我们的研究结果必须在包括女性和其他睡眠指标在内的队列研究中进行复制。