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To Sleep, Perchance to Eat

Joel Yager, MD

JAMA. 1999;282:689-690.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

For millions, late-night refrigerator raids are typified by Dagwood Bumstead, who for decades has haunted his kitchen, consuming foot-high sandwiches when everyone else in the family is asleep. For others, such raids are not comic and cause distress.

The differential diagnosis of aberrant nighttime eating includes the night-eating syndrome; sleep-related eating disorders in which alertness is altered; binge eating disorder and bulimia nervosa with nighttime eating; dissociative states in which nighttime eating may occur; and the Kleine-Levin syndrome, characterized by compulsive eating in conjunction with hypersexuality, behavioral abnormalities, and excessive somnolence.^1-2 Furthermore, patients may show features from several of these conditions concurrently.

In 1955, Stunkard et al³ identified night-eating syndrome, describing individuals who ate large quantities of food late at night, often had difficulty falling asleep until well after midnight, and had diurnal anorexia with little hunger early in the day. The majority were obese. Some of . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Author Affiliation: University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque.

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