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Heasman, BC, 2022. The role of diet-derived inflammation in the relationship between dietary patterns, mood and sleep quality. PhD, Nottingham Trent University.
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Abstract
Close relations exist between diet, mood and sleep. Healthy dietary behaviours are associated with good mental health, and interventions to improve diet quality are effective adjuvant treatments for major depressive disorder. Diet is also related to sleep: short sleep duration is associated with unhealthy diets, weight gain and obesity, and emerging evidence suggests that this relationship is reciprocal, with diet quality affecting sleep, in terms of both duration and quality. However, these relationships may not be simple and binary – they are likely to be multi-dimensional, but studies investigating these potentially more complex interactions are scarce, so mechanisms driving them are poorly understood.
Substantial research evidence links chronic inflammation to the pathophysiology of numerous serious diseases, including cardiovascular disease, and in the last decade, diet has been recognised as a major modulator of the chronic inflammatory process. In the current thesis I present evidence from three diverse samples, that diet-derived inflammation is a key mechanism driving the connection between habitual diet quality, mood and sleep quality.
The first study involved a group of employees working standard daytime hours, the second was a sample of shift workers, almost one-third of whom worked regular night shifts, and the third study consisted of a general population sample, including students and retired people, as well as those in a range of employments. High quality dietary patterns, including Mediterranean-style diets, rich in fruit, vegetables, fibre, fish and polyunsaturated fats, were consistently associated with better mood (fewer anxiety and depressive symptoms) and better sleep quality. Further, the relationships observed were fully mediated by the anti-inflammatory properties of these dietary patterns. Conversely, diets which included a high intake of fast food were associated with higher levels of depression and poorer sleep quality, and these associations were partly mediated by the pro-inflammatory properties of regular fast food intake. Mood disorders and problematic sleep are highly prevalent and comorbid conditions, with significant societal costs, yet diet-derived inflammation is itself asymptomatic. Diet is an unavoidable daily health exposure, but it is also a modifiable behaviour. Thus, dietary interventions to reduce the silent inflammatory burden in individuals who habitually consume a poor quality diet, may help to reduce the risk of mental illness and problematic sleep before clinical disease manifests. There is a long-established direct link between diet quality and cardiovascular disease risk. A further, novel thesis is that healthy dietary patterns may also reduce cardiovascular disease risk indirectly, via improvements in both mood and sleep quality, and these relations may be driven by the inflammatory potential of the diet.
| Item Type: | Thesis |
|---|---|
| Creators: | Heasman, B.C. |
| Contributors: | Name Role NTU ID ORCID |
| Date: | April 2022 |
| Rights: | The copyright in this work is held by the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title, university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed to the author. |
| Divisions: | Schools > School of Social Sciences |
| Record created by: | Jeremy Silvester |
| Date Added: | 11 Jul 2025 15:10 |
| Last Modified: | 11 Jul 2025 15:10 |
| URI: | https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/53944 |
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