UNITED KINGDOM – The widespread coverage of sleep disorders found its way to the United Kingdom recently when the BBC News reported that a whopping 30% of the UK population suffers from insomnia and other sleep disorders. And in an unusual twist, the Nov 27 article reports that increasing numbers are doing “rather strange things during the night.”
“Clinics say they are getting up to 50 new referrals a week,” writes BBC Magazine reporter Denise Winterman. “It’s a fivefold increase in just a decade for some. This big rise has been put down to raised awareness of sleep disorders and more people reporting them. The clinics are also dealing with some strange new sleep behavior, while other rather odd sleep disorders are becoming more common.”
One such strange behavior is sending text messages while asleep. The head of a Neurology Sleep Service facility in London says, “It is very common for people to do things in their sleep that they do repeatedly during the day,” with other extremes including driving a car while sleeping, and even having sex while asleep—so-called “sexsomnia.”
“The problem is people rarely do such acts under controlled conditions at a sleep clinic,” adds sleep specialist Dr Chris Idzikowski, director of the Edinburgh Sleep Clinic. “But this area of research is going to really move forward in the next few years because we now have the necessary equipment to record people in their own homes.”
Source: BBC Magazine
