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Does sleep debt increase sugar preference?

Dr. Joseph Bedont (Biological Sciences, ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø)

You’re exhausted late at night, but as you’re getting ready for bed, you realize: you’re hungry. Too hungry to sleep without a quick snack. Stifling a yawn, you walk over to the pantry, and peruse your options. What do you choose: cookies? chips? a bit of chocolate? For most people, it’s likely something carbohydrate rich. My Gold Award will fund work evaluating to what extent fruit flies model this behavior, both whether they choose sugar over protein and consume more food on sugar-rich than protein-rich single diets when they are sleep deprived for varying amounts of time. These studies will set the stage for future evaluations of the neural circuits mediating crosstalk between sleep and feeding behavior, and understanding the extent to which inability to detoxify nitrogen from dietary protein when tired (demonstrated in my previous published work) is a driver of hypothesized increased sugar preference in sleep deprivation. This work is particularly important given our societal context that increasingly views sugar as the root of dietary evil. When you’re short on sleep, especially chronically, it may be less unhealthy than conventional wisdom suggests to reach for that candy bar.