Medical News

While lying in bed at night is food your main focus as you’re trying to fall off to sleep? If you are getting up during the night and feel the need to eat, you may have an eating disorder described as Night Eating Syndrome (NES). The disorder is usually associated with depression, anxiety and stress. Sometimes this syndrome can be misunderstood if someone eats at night just for a simple snack for whatever reason. It may become evident if the behavior occurs for two consecutive months or more.

Researchers state late night eating affects approximately 1.5 percent of the general population with food usually being eaten after six o’clock in the evening. Additionally, they report that the emotional mood of people suffering from this disorder begins to be affected around four o’clock in the evening with the average number of wake up times to be about three occurrences during the night.

The main signs of this eating disorder are the person does not have an appetite for breakfast since they have consumed a large amount of their calorie intake during the night. Additionally, the food of choice is often carbohydrates, they have a difficult time of falling and staying asleep and because they actively work to hide their secret, they often feel tense, anxious or guilty.

Sometimes night eating disorder is confused with Nocturnal Sleep-Related Eating Disorder (NSRED), also known as  (SRED) or in laymen’s terms sleep eating. The person eats a large amount of food while sleep walking. In most cases, they are not aware of their actions until they wake up and see the dishes in the sink or see where they did not tidy up after eating.

Treatment for night eating begins with educating the person about the disorder. This will increase awareness of eating patterns and also help with identifying the triggers that can make someone want to eat large amounts of food late at night. Understanding the issue helps in recovery, being knowledgeable about the syndrome is the first choice of treating it. Additionally, as with other eating disorders, treatment also requires a combination of nutrition assessments, exercise physiology, stress management and an integration of therapies such as:

• Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT): solves problems through a goal-oriented, systematic approach for the treatment of mood, anxiety, personality, eating, substance abuse, and psychotic disorders.
• Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT): focuses on the role of thoughts, beliefs, behaviors and how people react to emotional stimulation. Clients are assisted in developing skills to assist them in coping with sudden intense surges of emotion.
• Interpersonal therapy (IPT): was developed for the treatment of depression. It emphasizes interpersonal interactions and their relationships to an individual’s mental health. It is also used in treating a number of other disorders, which includes substance abuse and eating disorders.

Asperger’s Syndrome was first described by an Austrian physician in the 1930s. The official diagnostic criteria of Asperger’s Syndrome accepted by The American Psychiatric Association includes impairment in social interactions; repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior without significant deficits in language development or cognitive ability. However Asperger’s Syndrome may result in social,occupational, and other areas of functioning

Children with this disorder may be extremely sensitive to sudden noises and certain types of sensory input. They may suffer from motor clumsiness. They demonstrate an avoidance of eye contact. Their language may be pedantic and somewhat odd. They often talk more like an adult than a child. They provide too much information and have trouble getting to the point. They may be perfectionist and believe that they are incompetent at doing things. They are poor at organization. Good at dealing with objects, they are poor at dealing with people. They have difficulty recognizing and expressing feelings. They seem to lack the words to express their own feelings.They are delayed in social maturity and have difficulty making friends. They may exhibit intense interest in certain topics and become quite knowledgeable about these topics. Yet they are distracted with topics that did not arouse their interest. They are described as having a “one track mind” They can be inflexible and unable to find an alternative when one solution does not work. They do not tolerate sudden changes in routine, such as a substitute teacher. In those situations that may have an emotional meltdown. They may be negative, pessimistic, and fearful of making a mistake. The term “theory of mind” is used to describe their inability to understand the intentions of feelings of others. They do not recognize sarcasm and may mistakenly believe that others are laughing at them.

The cause of Asperger’s has not been identified. It tends to run in families. There is some neurological evidence that the amygdala, a structure in the limbic system of the brain associated with emotion may be abnormal, with fewer connections to the frontal lobe. They may exhibit abnormal degrees of anger, anxiety, and sadness. and are emotionally over-reactive.

Children with Asperger’s require a toolbox of strategies and interventions to help them socially and emotionally. Sometimes medication for anxiety, depression, and mood swings may help. However, they also require social and emotional tools to stay calm and in control. Affective education can help teach these children to recognize facial expressions and non-verbal cues of others. They can benefit from being taught social skills such as eye contact and rehearsal of social situations. (”What would you do if…?) They can be taught to label their feelings with an emotional barometer and to recognize and respond to cues that things are getting out of hand. Solitude is the best curative for loss of emotional control. Keeping diaries, writing e-mail, listening to music can be helpful. Classroom accommodations are usually necessary, such as permission to leave the room when they feel themselves becoming upset.

Asperger’s is not all bad. If social demands can be minimized Asperger’s adults may become highly successful as mathematicians, physicists, even corporate executives. Some claim that Einstein demonstrated symptoms of Asperger’s Syndrome. A child with Asperger’s Syndrome remarked to me that if a cure could be found, he would not agree to take it. “I am who I am,” he explained. “Killing that part of my brain that is Asperger’s would be changing my personality.”