What is night eating syndrome?

Night Eating Syndrome Characteristics

There are people who seem to be unable of restraining them from food consumption even during the night. Rather, they wake up often, feeling extremely hungry, and rush to the refrigerator, feasting upon the greasiest things they can find. This phenomenon is called night eating syndrome, or NES. Those who suffer from it usually do not even remember their night “actions”. Nevertheless, they cannot stop with this bad habit of theirs and this reflects upon their life and health in general.

Manifestation of Night Eating Syndrome

Often, people who are on a rigorous diet of some sorts tend to break during the night and start eating, compensating for the losses. Night eating, in general, can be repetitive, creating a serious problem, or can happen rarely, occasionally, not presenting such a dire issue.

One of the first signs of this syndrome is appetite itself. Namely, people who tend to overeat during the night are usually not hungry during breakfast and eat little for lunch. Often during dinner time they go overboard with their eating repeating this process throughout the night even having to wake up to do so.

People with night eating syndrome may have sleeping disorders forcing them to indulge into food excessively. Moreover, they might develop a specific type of an addiction, considering them incapable of falling asleep unless they eat something.

Finally, depression may come with night eating. Depressed people may have urges to eat too much during the night, repeating this process often, even every single night.

For all these reasons, upon visiting your doctor, complaining about night eating, he or she is likely to try and rule out or diagnose depression or insomnia, before taking any further steps. If one of the two is the case, he/she will treat it first, likely treating the eating disorder along with the underlying condition.

Generally, this condition has become more and more present nowadays. Many people complain about their strange night eating habits, making this problem quite a serious one. Still, many people consider this not to be a major health issue, but, rather, a matter of an unhealthy lifestyle, alterable by the troubled individual him/herself. Regardless, people with night eating syndrome are usually incapable of stopping this phenomenon on their own. Moreover, young women are the group with the highest risk of developing this condition, due to hormonal imbalances being quite common during their age. All people with this problem are highly advised to seek medical attention and have their eating disorder treated since, in the long run; it may cause serious health issues.