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.