Millar, Brett M., et al. "What’s Sleep Got to Do with It?: Sleep Health and Sexual Risk-Taking Among Men Who have Sex with Men." AIDS and behavior (2018): 1-8.
Men who have poor sleep habits also tend to engage in riskier sexual behavior, according to new research which highlights the role of sleep quality in the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases like HIV.
Scientists from Hunter College at the City University of New York, Harvard Medical School, and the New York University School of Medicine collaborated on the study, in which 559 men who have sex with men (MSM) in Paris, France, were asked about 4 sleep factors (sleep quality, sleep duration, problems falling asleep, and problems staying awake during wake-time activities), as well as their habits regarding condom-less anal intercourse and the use of substances before or during sex.
The data showed all 4 sleep behaviors were associated with the risky sexual behavior, and poor sleep quality and problems falling asleep were associated with positively associated with using substances before or during sex.
“At the same time as dampening or weakening that area of the brain, tiredness also seems to fire up the more emotion-based areas like the amygdala such that, in effect, people tend to feel more charged up emotionally (especially by fear, frustration, or essentially becoming more volatile), and less able to manage/resolve that emotionality,” Millar said.
Earlier this year, Millar and colleagues published a separate paper which showed that gay and bisexual men were more likely to have unprotected sex if the intercourse occurred at or after their usual time of feeling tired. They also found tiredness was associated with higher sexual desire and higher rates of receptive anal sex.
Abstract
Emerging evidence links poor sleep health with a range of adverse health behaviors, including condomless anal intercourse (CAI) among men who have sex with men (MSM). We tested associations between a range of sleep health indicators and sex outcomes in an online sample of 559 MSM in Paris France, recruited from a geosocial-networking phone application. Participants reported on sleep quality, sleep duration, problems falling asleep, and problems staying awake during wake-time activities, and four sex outcomes: numbers of receptive, insertive, and total CAI partners in the past three months, and use of substances before or during sex. In bivariate analyses, all four sleep variables were associated with the three CAI outcomes, whereas poor sleep quality and problems falling asleep were positively associated with using substances before or during sex. Most of these associations remained significant when adjusting for various socio-demographic and behavioral covariates. These findings highlight the importance of addressing sleep health to prevent HIV risk among MSM.