Nocturnal Eating Syndrome
A Sleeping Disorder Related to Food
Nocturnal eating syndrome is a sleep disorder which is more
common in women than men and it is one of two eating disorders
which are related to sleep. The other is called sleep-related
food disorder. Nocturnal eating syndrome and sleep-related
food disorder are parasomnias
Nocturnal eating syndrome is a sleep disorder which can be
categorized by compulsive raids on the refrigerator at night.
Victims with this sleep disorder are usually very light sleepers.
They tend to wake up during the night and they have an overly
compulsive feeling that they will not be able to fall back
to sleep unless they eat something.
Once out of bed and at the refrigerator, the compulsion to
eat will make them gobble down food. People with nocturnal
eating syndrome are usually fully awake and remember eating
the food the next day. This syndrome is usually a combination
of a sleep disorder and an eating disorder. Insomnia is also
one of the factors in nocturnal eating syndrome. Usually,
the treatment for this disorder is received from a mental
health professional that specializes in people with eating
disorders. Besides, by improving sleep hygiene can also help
with this disorder.
Sleep-related eating disorder usually affects more women
then men and is a variation of sleepwalking according to the
medical study. During an episode of this sleep disorder, a
person will eat during partial arousal form a deep sleep.
Most of them will eat very unhealthy or strange foods that
they normally would not eat when awake. During an episode
of sleep-related eating disorder, a person might even eat
frozen pizza, raw cookie dough, peanut butter on fish and
even dog food.
And also, they tend to be very careless and sloppy and may
get burns or cuts during the process of preparing the food.
It is very hard to wake a person during an episode and they
have no memory of it in the morning. There does not seem to
be a correlation to hunger during a sleep-related eating disorder
episode, even if the person has eaten just before bed, an
episode can still happen.
Sleep eaters are mostly overweight due to the high caloric
intake at night. The weight gain can lead to other sleep disorders
such as obstructive sleep apnea. In order to treat this sleep
disorder, it is best to seek help from a medical or mental
health professional as soon as possible.
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