Association between the DASH dietary pattern with sleep duration and sleep quality in Iranian employees.

Background: The association between the dietary approach to stop hypertension (DASH) and sleep status is well-documented. Nevertheless, a consistent relationship with employees population has yet to be known. Thus, we aimed to investigate the relationship between the DASH diet and sleep quantity/quality among Iranian employees of both genders.

Methods: We enrolled 337 persons whose Sleep status was assessed through the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. A validated Food Frequency Questionnaire was used to measure the DASH diet score. Analysis of variance and covariance, chi-square, and multinomial logistic regression tests were used as appropriate.

Results: Our findings demonstrated that, even after adjusting for multiple potential confounders the odds of poor sleep quality were not significantly related to the higher DASH diet adherence (OR = 0.69, 95% CI: 0.38-1.27). However, participants in the highest tertiles of DASH had lower chances of experiencing short sleep duration compared to those in the lowest one (OR = 0.53; 95% CI: 0.30-0.96).

Conclusions: The present study indicated that Iranian employees with a higher adherence to the DASH diet had considerably lower odds of having short sleep; however DASH adherence has no significant effect on sleep quality. More prospective and controlled investigations are required to confirm these findings.