What causes sleep-related eating disorder?
Sometimes it is induced by a medication such as amitriptyline (a sedating anti-depressant) or zolpidem (a sedative medication), but other primary sleep disorders such as obstructive sleep apnea or periodic limb movement disorders may trigger the sleepwalking and sleep-eating. The most current research indicates it isn’t connected with daytime eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia. In most cases, it doesn’t seem to be caused by hunger, since eating prior to bedtime often doesn’t prevent sleep-eating. “This is not primarily an eating disorder,” says Dr. Neubauer. “This is mostly a sleep disorder.” “In some cases there were apparent triggering events such as encephalitis, auto-immune hepatitis, narcolepsy, cessation of drug/alcohol abuse or smoking or stress,” wrote Mahowald and Schenck, “Slightly more than one half of one large series of patients reported a past history of repeated emotional, physical or sexual abuse beginning during childhood.” However, they noted that wh
