A new study suggest sleep problems and energy product use are associated with increased alcohol use in teens, even after controlling for sociodemographics and mental health.
Results show that both sleeping problems and use of energy products are associated with greater risk of alcohol use in teenagers, according to a study conducted by the RAND Corporation.
"Our findings suggest that teenagers may be using highly caffeinated energy products to cope with sleep loss, and both sleep problems and energy product use are associated with increased risk of alcohol use," said lead author Wendy Troxel, PhD, behavioral and social scientist at the RAND Corporation.
The research abstract was published recently in an online supplement of the journal Sleep and will be presented Wednesday, June 10 in Seattle, Washington, at SLEEP 2015, the 29th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC.
The study group comprised 2,539 racially/ethnically diverse teens. The mean age of the study subjects was 16 and 54.2 percent was female. The current study was a cross-sectional examination of the association between self-reported measures of trouble sleeping, weekend and weekday total sleep time, and energy product use, and past month alcohol use. They also examined associations separately by race/ethnicity for Whites, Hispanics, Asians and "Other" racial/ethnic categories.
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