Some, Ed Weber among them, have narcolepsy, a rare condition characterized by abrupt, uncontrollable episodes of sleep. And while most sleep eaters are slightly overweight -- as are most American adults -- sleep eaters are no more likely to be obese than the general population.
The cause of the disorder remains a mystery, although recent studies have linked it to other medical problems including sleep apnea and restless legs syndrome as well as to certain medications, including sleeping pills. Some tests of physiological activity during sleep suggest the disorder might be primarily neurologic.
Neurologist John F. Cochran, who directs the sleep lab at Inova Alexandria Hospital, treats some patients who exhibit symptoms of nocturnal sleep-related eating disorder.
(Susan Biddle - The Washington Post)
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There is no diagnostic test for sleep eating, and little consensus on treatment other than that some medications are effective, while psychotherapy rarely is.
Nearly all sleep eaters show a preference for food high in carbohydrates and sugar that is sometimes consumed in a sloppy frenzy. (Doctors say they have never heard of anyone making a beeline for salad in the middle of the night.) And there's no explanation why some patients try to cook, while others concoct bizarre creations like salt sandwiches or buttered cigarettes.
The disorder isn't new, said neurologist Helene Emsellem, a neurologist who is medical director of a sleep disorders clinic in Chevy Chase. "What is new is that for the past 10 or 15 years, we've started paying more attention to everything going on with sleep."
Forget It
Two years ago during a program on forms of sleepwalking, television talk show host Montel Williams revealed that he had gotten up every night to eat for several years, incidents he didn't remember but discovered the following morning.
Williams told viewers he had removed raw foods from his refrigerator because "I wake up in the morning and there's a pack of chicken and there's a bite missing out of it. . . . I can take a whole pound of ham or bologna . . . and then wake up in the morning and not realize that I had ate [sic] it and ask, 'Who ate my lunch meat?' "
Williams's gustatory amnesia sounds familiar to Mark W. Mahowald, a professor of neurology at the University of Minnesota. Some patients, said Mahowald, report a hazy recollection of their nighttime foraging. Others have no memory of it.
"There's a continuum of awareness," said Mahowald, medical director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Minneapolis. "People often look awake and appear to be awake but aren't really awake."
While sleep eating sounds incredible, Mahowald said, it shares many characteristics of other, more common actions people perform when not fully awake. These include turning off an alarm clock, going back to sleep and not remembering doing so or being awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call, carrying on a brief conversation, then having no memory of it in the morning.
