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Protein intake and its association with sleep quality: results from 3 prospective cohort studies

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2024)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Background/Objectives

Sleep quality is a critical factor for daytime functioning and chronic disease risk. We investigated the association between intakes of total protein and protein subtypes and sleep quality in three U.S. cohorts.

Subjects/Methods

In the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS), NHS2, and Health Professionals Follow-up study (HPFS), dietary intake was assessed every 4 years using validated food frequency questionnaires. Sleep quality was measured once with the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index or adapted versions. With ordinal logistic regression, odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated to estimate the odds of having better sleep quality versus poorer sleep quality depending on protein intake (%Energy) based on the average of the prior two dietary questionnaires.

Results

In 32,212 women from NHS, 51,126 women from NHS2, and 14,796 men from HPFS, total protein intake was not associated with sleep quality. However, the intake of protein from vegetable sources showed no association or a positive association with sleep quality (OR for quartile 4 versus quartile 1 in NHS: 1.12, 1.04–1.20, P-trend < 0.001; NHS2: 1.01, 0.95–1.07, P-trend = 0.90; HPFS: 1.11, 0.99–1.23, P-trend = 0.05), whereas divergent results were observed for animal protein sources. Overall, intakes of processed red meat and poultry were associated with worse sleep quality, whereas no or positive associations were observed for dairy and fish protein.

Conclusion

Our results suggest that plants as a source of protein may be associated with better sleep quality than animal sources of protein. Further studies are warranted to validate our findings.

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Fig. 1: Association between intakes of different types of protein and sleep quality.
Fig. 2: Association between intakes of different types of meat and sleep quality.

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Data availability

The data underlying this article will be shared on reasonable request to the corresponding author. Further information including the procedures to obtain and access data from the Nurses’ Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study is described at https://www.nurseshealthstudy.org/researchers and https://sites.sph.harvard.edu/hpfs/for-collaborators/

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the participants and staff of the Health Professionals Follow-up Study and the Nurses’ Health Studies for their valuable contributions as well as the following US state cancer registries for their help: AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, IA, ID, IL, IN, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA, WY.

Funding

This work was supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Career Development Fellowship in the National Technology Centre Programme funded through a cofund with the European Union’s Horizon 2020 and Enterprise Ireland [grant number 713654]; The Health Research Board (JPI-ERA HDHL PREVNUT-2020-02); and the National Institutes of Health (U01 167552, UM1 CA186107, UM1 CA167552, K01 DK110267). EG is funded as an American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor (Award CRP-23-1014041). The funders had no role in the study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data; in the preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; or in the decision to submit the article for publication.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors jointly supervised this work: Lorraine Brennan, Kana Wu, Edward Giovannucci

Authors and Affiliations

  1. UCD Institute of Food and Health, UCD School of Agriculture and Food Science, UCD, Belfield, Dublin, 4, Ireland

    Janine Wirth & Lorraine Brennan

  2. UCD Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, UCD, Belfield, Dublin, 4, Ireland

    Janine Wirth & Lorraine Brennan

  3. Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 655 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Janine Wirth, Kehuan Lin, Kana Wu & Edward Giovannucci

  4. Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 655 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Kehuan Lin & Edward Giovannucci

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  1. Janine Wirth
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Contributions

The authors’ responsibilities were as follows — JW, KW, LB: designed the research; EG, KW, LB: directed the study’s implementation; JW and KL: created the database and analysed the data; KL: performed a technical review of the manuscript; JW: wrote the manuscript; and all authors: interpreted the results, critically reviewed the manuscript, and read and approved the final version.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kehuan Lin.

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Competing interests

KW is currently an employee and stakeholder of Vertex Pharmaceuticals. This work was not funded by this commercial entity. The other authors declare no competing interests.

Ethical approval

The studies were approved by the Institutional Review Board at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health (#10372) and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (2001-P-001945/16).

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Wirth, J., Lin, K., Brennan, L. et al. Protein intake and its association with sleep quality: results from 3 prospective cohort studies. Eur J Clin Nutr (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41430-024-01414-y

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