Diet, Physical Activity, and Disinhibition in Middle-Aged and Older Adults: A UK Biobank Study

Abstract

Disinhibition is a prominent feature of multiple psychiatric disorders, and has been associated with poor long-term somatic outcomes. Modifiable lifestyle factors including diet and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) may be associated with disinhibition, but their contributions have not previously been quantified among middle-aged/older adults. Here, among N = 157,354 UK Biobank participants aged 40–69, we extracted a single disinhibition principal component and four dietary components (prudent diet, elimination of wheat/dairy/eggs, meat consumption, full-cream dairy consumption). In addition, latent profile analysis assigned participants to one of five empirical dietary groups: prudent-moderate, unhealthy, restricted, meat-avoiding, low-fat dairy. Disinhibition was regressed on the four dietary components, the dietary grouping variable, and self-reported MVPA. In men and women, disinhibition was negatively associated with prudent diet, and positively associated with wheat/dairy/eggs elimination. In men, disinhibition was also associated with consumption of meat and full-cream dairy products. Comparing groups, disinhibition was lower in the prudent-moderate diet (reference) group compared to all other groups. Absolute βs ranged from 0.02–0.13, indicating very weak effects. Disinhibition was not associated with MVPA. In conclusion, disinhibition is associated with multiple features of diet among middle-aged/older adults. Our findings foster specific hypotheses (e.g., early malnutrition, elevated immune-response) to be tested in alternative study designs.

Cortical and Subcortical Brain Volumes Partially Mediate the Association between Dietary Composition and Behavioral Disinhibition: A UK Biobank Study

“…Behavioral disinhibition is not a standard measure available in the UKBiobank. Hence, we used a single aggregated measure for disinhibition that has been calculated on a much larger sample of the UKBiobank by [ 22 ]. In that study, a principal component analysis (PCA) was performed on all available disinhibition-related items from different questionnaires (e.g., items covering addictions including smoking, risk behaviors such as heavy drinking, self-reported and hospital diagnoses of mental health disorders, self-harm behaviors, and personality questionnaire items, among others.…”

“…To obtain a balanced representation of different manifestations of disinhibition, these items were grouped into nine types of disinhibited behaviors. Schweren et al [ 22 ] performed the PCA based on tetrachoric correlations between these behavioral groups using the psych package in R ( Supplementary Table S3 ). The single-component model, preferred a priori, presented with no interpretational shortcomings: all behaviors loaded positively on the principal component with factor loadings ranging from 0.335 to 0.708 ( Supplementary Table S3 ).…”

“…Dietary composition parameters per subject were obtained from the [ 22 ] paper, where dietary composition was calculated based on the 29 items of the Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ), a self-report questionnaire assessing the participants’ past-year average food consumption. Individual items of the FFQ are highly correlated, reflecting underlying dietary patterns.…”

“…Individual items of the FFQ are highly correlated, reflecting underlying dietary patterns. To derive these patterns, Schweren et al [ 22 ] performed a PCA with Promax rotation implemented in the psych package in R. The PCA started with one principal component, and new components were added one-by-one. Components were retained when they contributed unique information, were interpretable and plausible, and remained stable upon including additional components to the model.…”

“…Indeed, studies have consistently linked overall dietary quality to levels of behavioral inhibition [ 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ]. In particular, a recent large-scale population-based study using the UKbiobank cohort was able to show associations between behavioral disinhibition and four main dietary composition components, namely overall diet quality, presence of specific dietary restrictions, meat/fish intake, and high-fat dairy intake [ 22 ].…”