Associations of dinner-to-bed time, post-dinner walk and sleep duration with colorectal cancer: A case-control study

Colorectal cancer (CRC) ranked 3rd for cancer incidence and 4th for cancer death worldwide. Despite the increasing number of CRC studies, the etiology is not yet clear. In this study, we investigated the effects of the dinner-to-bed time, post-dinner walk and sleep duration on the risk for CRC. We conducted a matched case-control study based on hospital population. We involved 166 patients had a newly histologically confirmed CRC without previous treatment and 166 healthy healthy residents matched by age and gender at Fujian Medical Union Hospital. A self-designed questionnaire was used to information on demographic characteristics, dinner-to-bed time, post-dinner walk, sleep duration, and other behavioral factors. Conditional logistic regression was used to calculate the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) to assess the effect of dinner-to-bed time, post-dinner walking, and sleep duration as well as their joint effect on the risk of CRC at different genders. The adjusted odds ratio (AOR) of CRC for subjects with shorter dinner-to-bed time (2.0–2.9 h) were 2.527 (95% CIs = 1.127–5.337), relative to those with longer dinner-to-bed time (≥4 h), the difference was statistically significant (P < .05). Post-dinner walk was associated with a significantly decreased CRC risk (AOR = 0.339, 95% CIs = 0.203–0.865) compared with post-dinner non-walk. Compared with 6–9 h of sleep duration, the risk OR of CRC were 3.843 (95% CIs = 2.767–7.800, P < .05) and 2.12 (95% CIs = 0.754–5.959, P > .05) for long (≥9 h) and short (<6 h) sleep duration. The risk of CRC individuals with shorter dinner-to-bed time and post-dinner non-walk caused higher risk than those with longer dinner-to-bed time and post-dinner walk (AOR = 3.361, 95% CIs = 2.043–6.316). The risk of CRC was 2.231 (95% CIs = 1.089–3.762, P < .001), with a shorter dinner-to-bed time and ≥9 hours of sleep duration. We found that shorter dinner-to-bed time (<3 h), post-dinner walk, and long sleep duration (≥9 h) were seems to be related to CRC and may increase the risk of CRC.