Sleeping and eating disorders

Over the last three decades there has been a dramatic increase in the prevalence of eating disorders (ED) in western society. The main syndromes are anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN) and non-specified eating disorders (ED-NOS). These disorders are with high morbidity and life threatening complications. Sleep disturbances are predominant symptom in these disorders. Researches have examined sleep disorders among people suffering from eating disorders, using different methods: sleep polysomnography, actigraph and self report questionnaires. The article presents the diagnostic criteria of eating disorders, sleep structure and review of researches, which examined sleep patterns among people with AN, BN and binge eating disorder (BED). In addition the article reviews the night eating syndrome. This syndrome is considered to be a combination of eating disorder and sleeping disorder. The article describes the characteristic sleep-wake patterns of each syndrome and in comparison to the control group. The discussion suggests some possible explanations for the discrepancies between subjective and objective experience of sleep.