Do you drink energy drinks every month? It can lead to insomnia – everything you need to know
Consuming energy drinks even once a month can lead to poor sleep quality and insomnia, a study has found. Energy drinks are marketed as mental and physical boosters and are popular among students and young people
Consuming energy drinks even once a month can lead to poor sleep quality and insomnia, a study has found. Energy drinks are marketed as a mental and physical boost and are popular among students and young people in general.
The research, published in the open access journal BMJ Open, showed that the higher the consumption frequency, the fewer hours of nighttime shut-eye were clocked.
Even the occasional can one to three times a month was associated with an increased risk of disturbed sleep, the findings showed.
That's because energy drinks contain an average caffeine content of 150 mg per liter, as well as sugar, vitamins, minerals and amino acids in varying amounts, explain researchers from the Universities of Oslo and Bergen in Norway.
Although there is evidence that they reduce sleep quality, it was not clear exactly which aspects of sleep might be more or less affected, and whether there are gender-specific differences in these effects.
To investigate this, the researchers used 53,266 young people aged 18 to 35 in Norway.
Participants were asked how often they consumed energy drinks, with the response options being daily, weekly (once; 2-3 times; 4-6 times), monthly (1-3 times) and rarely/never.
They were also asked detailed questions about their usual sleep patterns: when they went to bed and got up; how long it took them to fall asleep (sleep latency); waking up after going to sleep. Sleep efficiency was then calculated based on total nighttime sleep hours versus time spent in bed.
Insomnia was defined as experiencing difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep and waking early on at least three nights of the week, plus daytime sleepiness and fatigue on at least three days of the week, for at least three months.
Of those who said they drank these drinks, 5.5 percent of women said they drank them four to six times a week, and just over 3 percent reported daily consumption. The comparable figures for men were 8 percent and 5 percent respectively.
But there was a clear dose-response association between energy drink consumption and fewer hours of sleep for both genders.
Both men and women who reported daily consumption slept about half an hour less than those who reported only occasional or no consumption.
Similar associations were also observed for waking after falling asleep and taking longer to fall asleep.
And the increasing consumption was accompanied by a corresponding increase in both nighttime waking time and the time it takes to fall asleep – poorer sleep efficiency, the researchers said.
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