What is sleep-related eating disorder?
In Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine, 3rd edition (2000), the authors make a distinction between sleep-related eating disorder and nocturnal eating syndrome, “which was originally described as a combination of insomnia and nocturnal binge eating with morning anorexia. Patients with nocturnal eating syndrome also have recurrent awakenings from sleep associated with inability to get back to sleep without eating. Patients are fully awake during these episodes and able to remember them the next day….” Sleep-related eating disorder usually begins in adulthood and is characterized by eating episodes which occur after sleep onset. The condition is far more prevalent than previously thought, according to Mark Mahowald, MD, Director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center, and Carlos H. Schenck, MD, of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis.
