Sugar or sleep, which one do you pick most often?

A recent British study seems to confirm something I’ve always known instinctively from my own behavior — people who don’t get enough sleep eat more sugar than those who do.

I know when I was working I regularly would get only 5-6 hours of sleep a night and so eat sugary treats throughout the day to keep going, even though the sugar energy bursts were not all that long-lasting.

Cutting sugar, as found in treats like this, is extremely tough work, confirms a new study.

Now a new study published in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reports that people who get at least seven hours sleep a night may be able to eat less sugar than those who get less sleep.

Some participants in the study were counseled on how to get to bed earlier — things like less screen time, not drinking coffee before bed time and establishing a relaxing going-to-bed ritual.

Approximately 86% of the counseled group increased its nightly sleep time, anywhere from 52 to 88 minutes, and ate 10 fewer grams of sugar a day as a result.

I’m a night person who much prefers staying up late. Even now that I’m retired from a full-time job, I’m finding it difficult to get more sleep each night. I’d rather stay up playing video games or watching TV. But I’m also chronically tired, so I’m trying to force myself to set a bedtime again, much as my parents did for me when I was a kid. We’ll see how that works out.