Have you ever had this instance when you woke up in the middle of the night and you’re hungry so you get up and eat? Well, what if I tell you that there is this eating disorder that makes you get up in the middle of the night and smash on a lot of food. This eating disorder that you or some other individuals suffer from is called Night Eating Syndrome. NES was very first discovered in 1955. The disorder wakes you up in the middle of the night and will not let you fall back asleep till you start eating food even tho you are not hungry. This will usually happen when you are fully awake and know what you are doing. This disorder is usually confused with a disorder called sleep-related eating disorder or SRED.
In SRED you are in a state between being asleep and awake it is called the twilight stage. Unlike NES when you know what you are doing and you are fully awake, in SRED you don’t know what you are doing because you are not fully awake and people wake up with a mess of food around them in their bed and they don’t understand why because they have no recognition of going and getting food. With having NES People are reported to have zero control over their eating habits or behaviors. People will eat and eat past the point of fullness and people are reported to have zero desire for food. In some other night time eating disorders people will tend to eat a lot of food but in NES the portions of food ate are very much smaller than food that would be binged eaten. NES is more prevalent than some other eating disorders like Anorexia or Bulimia. Common in both male and females and it affects 1.5 percent of the population, and in people who would like to have treatment for being obese 6 percent of them have NES, but people who are around 100 pounds overweight 27 percent of them have been reported to have NES.
Many people have shown some signs and some of the signs that have been reported are, the individual has been reported to have little to zero appetite for breakfast, will not eat for over seven hours after waking up, is not hungry at all or is upset with how much food they have eaten in the day that has just pasted. The individual will eat very little food will like lunch or dinner but later on, after the meal, they will eat even more than they did during the meal, The individual will eat more than half of the daily food intake during and after the meal but will mainly eat after the meal, most time is when they eat in the middle of the night, the person is usually feeling tense, anxious, upset or even guilty when they are eating food. Is usually a stress-related and will usually the individual will have depression as long as stress. The most they are feeling stressed or depressed is at night when they might be moody or tense because they want the food even though they are not even hungry.
The person is very restless at night, will wake up in the middle of the night or multiple times to go eat food. Most of the time when this disorder is discovered it usually a hereditary syndrome. Usually is found in people between the ages of the late twenties or early thirties. Some of the things that may trigger Night Eating Syndrome is depression, anxiety, stress, sometimes even being bored, prolonged dieting, and last but not least body image dissatisfaction. The clearest and major risk from NES is becoming obese. When people are eating they often feel depressed, upset, mad, angry, and even disgusted by the way they feel or the way they look.
