NEWS RELEASE 8-JUN-2021

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-06/aaos-scp060821.php

DARIEN, IL – A recent study of teens and young adults found that several factors related to sleep timing and sleep duration are associated with an increased risk of cannabis use and binge drinking of alcohol during the following year.

Results show that a greater late-night preference predicted a greater likelihood of any cannabis use the following year. Greater late-night preference, greater daytime sleepiness, later sleep timing on the weekend, and shorter sleep duration during weekdays and on the weekend, all predicted an increased risk for more severe binge drinking the following year.

Extract

“Sleep is modifiable behavior, and perhaps easier to modify than going after substance use directly,” said Hasler. “Furthermore, other studies show college-age teens are more willing to hear about changing their sleep than changing their substance use. Thus, focusing on improving teen sleep — including through delaying school start times — may be an underutilized but effective approach to reducing risk for problematic substance use.”

Read more at: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-06/aaos-scp060821.php

The post Sleep characteristics predict cannabis use, binge drinking in teens and young adults appeared first on EMFSA.

Abstract

Introduction

Growing evidence indicates that sleep characteristics predict later substance use and related problems during adolescence and young adulthood. However, most prior studies have assessed a limited range of sleep characteristics, studied only a narrow age span, and included relatively few follow-up assessments. Here, we used multiple years of data from the National Consortium on Alcohol and Neurodevelopment in Adolescence (NCANDA) study, which spans the adolescent period with an accelerated longitudinal design, to examine whether multiple sleep characteristics in any year predict substance use the following year.

Methods

The sample included 831 participants (423 females; age 12–21 years at baseline) from NCANDA. Sleep variables included the previous year’s circadian preference, sleep quality, daytime sleepiness, timing of midsleep (weekday and weekend), and sleep duration (weekday and weekend). Each sleep variable’s association with the subsequent year’s substance use (cannabis use or alcohol binge severity) across years 1–5 was tested separately using generalized linear mixed models (zero-inflated Negative Binomial for cannabis; ordinal for binge severity) with age, sex, race, visit, parental education, previous year’s substance use (yes/no) as covariates and subject as a random effect.

Results

With regard to cannabis use, greater eveningness and shorter weekday sleep duration predicted an increased risk for additional days of cannabis use the following year, while greater eveningness and later weekend midsleep predicted a greater likelihood of any cannabis use the following year. With regard to alcohol binge severity, greater eveningness, greater daytime sleepiness, and shorter sleep duration (weekday and weekend) all predicted an increased risk for more severe alcohol bingeing the following year. Post-hoc stratified analyses indicated that some of these associations may differ between high school-age and college-age participants.

Conclusion

Our findings extend prior work, indicating that eveningness and later sleep timing, as well as shorter sleep duration, especially on weekdays, are risk factors for future cannabis use and alcohol misuse. These results underscore a need for greater attention to sleep characteristics as potential risk factors for substance use in adolescents and young adults and may inform future areas of intervention.

https://academic.oup.com/sleep/article-abstract/44/Supplement_2/A240/6260818?redirectedFrom=fulltext

The post Self-Reported Sleep and Circadian Characteristics Predict Future Substance Use: A Longitudinal Analysis from the NCANDA Study appeared first on EMFSA.