October 17, 2012 • 26 mins
Who sleepwalks the most? Kids. In this episode, Cristen and Caroline explore the odd world of sleep behaviors, including sleep-related eating disorders, the relationship between sleepwalking and depression and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about sleepwalking. Caroline,
did you ever sleepwalk once? Exactly? Well that I remember
(00:24):
you look so proud of yourself. I just think it's
ridiculous because I yeah, and it's sleepwalking. As we'll get into,
it's so common in children. But I only did it
once that I can call. And it's because I woke
up at the top of the stairs. Yeah, like I
had gotten out of bed and walked to the top
of the stairs. Was like, oh, I'm gonna go back
to bed. I did a lot of I do and
(00:44):
still do a lot of sleep hand movements. Like when
I worked for the newspaper, I would have these terrible
work stress dreams and wake up because I was using
my hands to lay out the newspaper. And and sometimes
I would wake myself up doing um sleep handwater guns.
That's awesome. That's officially the best sleep jet sure I've
(01:06):
ever heard of. Yeah, but no, no, no sleepwalking stories
beyond that. Listen. I don't want to one up you.
But I slept walked sleepwalked. Is that the past tense leepwalked?
I sleep walked as a child A lot, kind of
a lot it was, only it was it was a
fairly brief face. I'm thinking maybe I don't know six
(01:28):
months to a year, but it happened a lot when
it started, and I vaguely remember. And maybe I say
I remember because my siblings thought that it was polarious
the next day, um, because I had we had a
pet ferret. And there, I mean, I can hear like
a collective. Yeah, I just made a face. We had
(01:51):
a pet ferret. And I got up out of bed,
and my my parents live in the like a ranch
style house with a really long haul. It's a long, long,
lean house. And my my room was at one end
of the hall, and so I got up, started walking
on the hall, be lined over to my ferrets cage,
grabbed my ferret and kept on walking up to the
(02:15):
living room, where presumably the older members of the family,
older siblings and my parents were up watching TV or something.
And I walked up to my oldest sister and I
held out my ferret and I asked her what kind
of plant it was, at which point she realized that
I was sleepwalking. And so the cure for my sleepwalking
(02:37):
always if if I went to my parents room, because inevitably,
with like four siblings, you know, I'm going to run
into somebody at some point in the house. So let
someone to run into me. They would take me to
the bathroom. It would score me to my bathroom and uh,
and I would pee and I go back to bed.
Would be great. Um. So so that was my sleepwalking.
(02:58):
But I don't think that it has happen and since then,
and I really hope it doesn't happen now because I
live alone and that would be weird. Yeah, get up
and bother your neighbors about their pets. Excuse me, Look
at a plant do you have? I'm holding like a
feral cat in the neighborhood. So why don't we figure
(03:20):
out what was going on with these Parasomnia's nice word,
which are disruptive sleep disorders, including sleep walking, which occurred
during arousals from either rem sleep or partial arousals from
non rem sleep. And since we've talked about parasomnia, is
also sleep walking, specifically as a parasomnia referred to as somnambulism.
(03:45):
Sounds so nice, So anyone's stating for their g R
or s a t out there somnambulism. Yeah. And if
anybody wants to come up with a word for sleep
finger guns, let me know. Um. So, sleep walking most
often occur is during the deep non REM sleep early
in the night. But if it occurs during REM sleep,
(04:06):
it's actually part of REM behavior disorder intends to happen
near morning. So years happened mine would be at night.
It would be within the first couple of hours of
me falling asleep. Um. And when it happens in the
during the REM cycle later on in the night or
into the early morning, it's actually more dangerous. And one
(04:26):
thing that got us thinking about sleepwalking to I went
to go see Mike Barbiglia of This American Life Fame,
What's Up Other awesome podcast and radio show. I saw
his movie Sleepwalk with Me, which is about his REM
behavior disordered sleepwalk. Didn't he walk through a window in
which he ends up walking through a window? Actually, well,
(04:48):
he ran through a window because I think he needs
some from the Marsha to get you through a plane
of glass. Um. But typically these bouts will last ten
minutes or less, and it's most commonly seen in kids,
it's ages eight to twelve, but it can happen obviously
at any age, as can sleep, water guns, Yeah, exactly,
(05:09):
or sleep newspaper designing. Um and children see there. The
thing is, they're not sure exactly what causes sleepwalking. It's
just it's super common. Your brain is just doing something weird.
But they think in children it's possibly related to fatigue
and lack of sleep or anxiety. In adults, they tend
to tie it to alcohol, sedatives, or other medications like
(05:30):
ambient and specifically which we'll get into, also medical conditions
and mental disorders. In the elderly, it can be a
symptom of organic brain syndrome, also known as just having
basically decreased mental function due to a disease of some
kind or rim behavior disorders. Yeah. And one of the
more recent findings about this is that sleepwalking is in
(05:53):
fact hereditary, which means if I have a child, oh man,
their door, does anyone does your mother or father's sleepwalk?
I don't think so. As far as I know, I was,
I've been the only child in my family to exhibit sleepwalking. Um.
But maybe maybe you had famous sleepwalking grandparents, famous ones
that I don't know about them. But there was a
(06:17):
study that came out in two thousand eleven from the
Washington University School of Medicine, UH, in which they studied
four generations of a sleep walking family. I kind of
it was a great study background just because it was
all about this family of sleepwalkers, intense sleepwalkers. There go
the Smiths walking down the street again or all in
(06:40):
their pajamas. Uh. And they were able to trace this
sleep walking down to a section of chromosome twenty. But
they're not sure which jean exactly was responsible for the
sleepwalking because on chromosome twenty you got a bunch of
jeans still to choose from all these genes. Yeah, and
then stamp for it in spring twelve fact us up
(07:01):
they found it more than a third of sleepwalkers do
have a family history of the disorder, which is very interesting. Yeah,
supposedly someone with the gene I E me, surely I
have this gene. I mean, and I'm not just trying
to like be a well, I must have this gene.
But I assume that I have this gene, uh, my
offspring will have a fifty percent chance of getting it.
(07:25):
I kind of hope that if I do have a kid,
one of them does, because that sounds hilarious, like a
kid walking around with pets asking strange questions. UM. But
in terms of gender, it's probably not going to make
much of a difference if I were to have a
boy child or a girl child, because a lot of
these studies say that there's no gender component to it.
(07:46):
Although a study published in Neurology UH had something different
to say. Yeah, it found that childhood sleepwalking was significantly
more frequent in women. Um. They found that it occurred
often in two point eight percent of women and just
two percent of men, and sometimes in six point nine
(08:08):
percent of women and five point seven percent of men.
So not a huge difference, but this study did point
out there was a bit of a difference for women. Yeah,
And I think it's worth noting too that that study
was based on data from the finished twin cohort that
followed around I think it was something around a lot
(08:29):
of people pairs of of finished twins, and it's it's
often used as a really solid data set for UM
kind of figuring out behavioral patterns. But again, you know,
a lot of times we'll still see no no gender component. Um,
but what do sleepwalkers do besides finger guns? Yes? I
(08:51):
mean really, they just get up and walk around. Yeah,
you know, there's often the kind of the film trope
of walking around like a zombie. It was um step
others where they get up and throw all their presents
on the Christmas tree in their parents room. Have you
seen that? No? I have not seen that recommend YouTube.
Um but a lot of times the symptoms of sleepwalking.
I find it kind of funny that they are symptoms
(09:11):
of sleepwalking. Would the symptoms be walking around when you're
sleep but thank you Mayo Clinic for clearing things up,
acting confused or disoriented when they wake up, having a
blank look on their face. What kind of plant is it?
Would I imagine opening their eyes during sleep, not remembering
the sleepwalking episode and saying, here we go, saying things
(09:34):
that don't make sense. Yeah. Well, my freshman roommate didn't sleepwalk.
I don't think it would have been possible, actually, because
our dorm room was so small. But she would sleep
talk all the time. And that girl would wake me
up having conversations and I'd set up and be like,
what what what did you say? And She's like the eggs.
Did you get the eggs? We they're green, we need
(09:54):
to cook them. And she would have a whole conversation
about the flipping eggs, and I'd be like, God, Lauren,
I got a test in the morning, and then you'd
wake up wanting egg Yeah. God, a cycle just created
a cycle. But sleepwalkers can get themselves into troubles. But
really the only potential complication from sleepwalking is hurting yourself
(10:17):
if you had kept going over the cliff when roll
down those stairs. Um, one time I was in my sleep.
I don't know that this could be attributed to sleepwalking,
but I did roll off the top bunk and fall
onto onto my desk chair. Child. Did you break yourself? No,
but I got a pretty sweet bruise. It looks kind
of cool. Um. And it's also it's not dangerous. This
(10:38):
is a big myth. It's out there. It is not
dangerous to wake up a sleepwalker. Yeah. I think the
worst that you would get is them being really kind
of scared and confused as to why they're standing up
in the hall with a ferret. Yeah, but it'll it'll
it fades away. Um. And according to the National Sleep Foundation,
about ten percent of Americans reports some erratic nighttime behaviors
(11:01):
like eating, walking, talking, having sex, or even becoming violent
when they're sleep. Yeah, we haven't even touched on and
aren't going to in this episode touched on night terrors
and sleep violence. I've had one night r I get.
I don't know why I have these, like individual little things,
but I'll save it. It just didn't really involve me
sitting up screaming and the being like, oh, okay, well anyway,
(11:23):
but yes, the one that I think is the most entertaining,
I'm I'm really sorry if that's insensitive. But one that
I think is interesting, I guess I should say is
a sleep related eating disorder. And so this is coming
I got. I got my info from an ABC News
article about it that found that more than a million
Americans suffer from this really strange affliction, and most of
(11:46):
them are women. I don't know what's up with that,
but basically, these people get up in the middle of
night do their sleepwalking thing, but instead of just you know,
wandering around like zombies, they go to the kitchen. They
either fix themselves food or they eat stuff out of
the fridge, or they make like a cat food sandwich
because they really don't know what they're doing and they
just eat and eat and eat and then just go
(12:08):
back to bed. Yeah, and for some people this obviously
can be a problem. There was one woman profiled who
had gained sixty pounds as a result of sleep eating.
And while Dr Carlos Shank, the author of Sleep, The Mysteries,
the Problems, and the Solutions, said that sleep eating is
a result of a major quote physiological force coming from
(12:29):
deep within your brain and body to eat so inappropriately.
But it probably also has something to do with this
chemical lepton, because lepton is what is released in our
brains during sleep to suppress hunger, because that would be awful.
If we could get hungry while we were sleeping, I
would never sleep. Um. And so there there must be
(12:51):
something with part of the brain, possibly the gabble one
neurotransmitter that helps control the kind of sleep process in
the brain coming awake and kicking that leapton back in
without us knowing it. Yeah. So, and it's funny because
in the story they talked about how people tend to
go for like the cheesy poofs, you know, and not
(13:12):
instead of the apple because your whole you don't have
any It's not like you're judging. You're not making a
judgment call of like, you know what, I'm sleep eating,
I should probably have that banana. Yeah, your frontal cortex
that makes all of those like rational decisions between you know,
vegetables versus a milkshake. That's sleeping it's thinking about water guns. Um.
(13:35):
And this is part of the reason why there was
a rash of in the mid two thousands of ambient
it's a sleeping pill ambient related driving arrests because these
people were taking ambient and doing all sorts of crazy
things like driving. Eating was a big problem, having sex
and having no idea that they were doing all of this.
(13:56):
And as far as the eating goes, they thought the
there's a study done on it and they found that
an active ingredient and ambient tinkered with the lefton yeah,
which I immediately looked at my ambient bottle and was like,
O God, what have I done. Um, I really don't
think I've done anything weird because I just don't that
I know of. You don't wake up with like pepperoni
(14:19):
stuck to your cheek, well, I mean like that's a
Saturday night, But yeah, it is scary what ambient can do.
I mean they talk about people, you know, getting in
their car and driving and running into other cars, hitting
telephone poles, things like that. And when the cops come that,
you know, they just assume you're you're drunk or you're
high on something, and so like, how do you how
do you test for ambient? I don't know. Maybe if
they start talking about ferrets are doing finger water guns, well,
(14:42):
you know what, I kind of made it poked a
little fun at the symptoms of sleepwalking. Maybe it's good
that those exist because maybe the you know, those are
the signs if someone the police should listen to our podcast.
Uh And since we've mentioned s a t words earlier
with somnambulism in paris, omnia's very briefly, people who have
sex in their sleep. They exhibit somnambulistic sexual behavior, otherwise
(15:09):
known as sexomnia. I just wanted to say all of
that out loud. Somnambulistic sexual behavior of sexomnia sounds like
a hex So how many of us, and by us,
I mean adults are doing this because a lot of
times kids will age out of sleepwalking, But how many
(15:31):
of us do this? Well, it's actually got a pretty
high lifetime rate people who have experienced it, but the
amount of adults who currently sleepwalk is pretty low. Um.
Going back to that Stanford study from spring of three
points six percent of US adults or eight point four
million people reported sleepwalking at least once in the previous year,
(15:51):
with one percent saying they had had two or more
episodes in one month. Yeah, the lifetime prevalence, like you said,
it's pretty high at twenty nine point two per cent.
And sleepwalking once like you did, out of the norm, Caroline,
because just over eighty percent of those who have sleepwalked
reported they've done so another time in the past five years.
(16:17):
And there are some conditions that are associated too with
sleepwalking behavior, not just the you know, the eating and
walking and talking, but things like sleep disordered breathing. Right,
This is a group of disorders characterized by, as you
would think, abnormal breathing patterns during sleep, most commonly obstructive
sleep apnea. And very interesting study that confirmed the importance
(16:40):
of correcting sleep problems in children. This is in pediatrics
in two thousand three. Children with chronic parasomnias may often
also present sleep disordered breathing or restless restless leg syndrome.
To a lesser extent, They found that frequent episodes of
sleepwalking could result from allergies, swollen tonsils, and other factors
that interfere with three eating. But once they had their
(17:02):
tonsils and or adnoids removed, fix the problem. Yeah, so
all their sleep disservances were gone. Yeah, so doctors should.
The researchers were hoping to like out of this pediatric
study that they could convince doctors to pay closer attention
to those kinds of breathing problems and kids. Um and
speaking of kids, migraines have been implicated. There were several
(17:25):
studies from the eighties showing that kids with migraines were
more likely to sleepwalk than were kids with other types
of headaches or even seizures. They also found that sleepwalking
was more common in kids who had migraines with aura
as opposed to migraines without OORA Like I get migraines
with aura, I get the whole, Like I get traveling numbness,
I get the lights and the party streamers in my vision,
(17:47):
I get numbness along my jaw. Whereas these kids who
don't have aura, would just be like hit with a migraine.
Another study found that a greater percentage of adults with
migraines were sleepwalkers compared to adults with just allergies. So
there's something going on in the brain. It's amazing though that,
like I because I currently have a cold or I
have you know, pretty much gotten over it. But so
(18:08):
I'm having sleep issues right now and I'm a migraine suffer.
It's just weird that I don't sleepwalk. I feel like
I should. Maybe it's only a matter of time. Caroline
dum Dum dumb Well. Mental health issues too seem to
have one of the strongest relationships to sleep walking um
and with For people with depression, for instance, they are
(18:29):
three and a half times more likely to sleepwalk than
those without it, and people who are taking s sr
EYES for depression are three times more likely to sleepwalk
twice a month are or more. And it's not necessarily
the the s sr I antidepressants that are increasing the
risk of sleepwalking. They still think that it's something to
(18:50):
do with the depression, right, And there's also an interesting
link with obsessive compulsive disorder. They found that people with
O c D are seven times more likely to sleep walk,
So that's that's nuts. It's also more likely for those
with alcohol abuse or dependence, and uh, there could be
there could be a schizophrenia link. An article in the
(19:10):
British Journal of psycho Psychiatry in April found that schizophrenics
have sleep problems and that could have to do with
you know, all their sleep patterns are all messed up.
It's not like, you know, you want to go to
bed eleven o'clock, you sleep through the night, you have
your rem sleep, you get up at seven or whatever. Like.
They have a definite um kind of a mixed up
(19:31):
sleep patterns. So they also exhibit sleepwalking. And in the
ultimate twist of irony, people who take sleep medication are
two and a half times more likely to sleep walk
more than twice a month than people who don't take them.
So that kind of relates back to what we were
talking about with ambient. You take something to fall asleep.
At least you might get some exercise, or you might
(19:53):
eat a dozen donuts. Yeah, maybe you'll You'll walk to
the car to drive to Rispy Cream to eat the doughnuts,
drive back there you go, or you might drive to
Tim Horton's if you're one of our Canadian listeners, what
what Canada reference? Boom dropping truth bombs? So I think
(20:15):
that sums up our our sleepwalk. The thing is, we
still have an answered why it happens. We know that
it has something to do with this chromosome twenty, something
to do with passing it being passed along through our
family lines, and something to do with being a kid,
and maybe something to do with if you're an adult
(20:36):
who sleep box. Could be a mental health depression, sleep medication, alcohol, Okay,
a lot of things. It could be anything, is what
we're saying. Um But if you do want to see
um a a funny depiction of sleepwalking like real something
that happened in real life. I do recommend go see
a sleepwalk with me. I enjoyed it. It was fun.
(20:59):
And there's an Ira Glass cameo for this American Life
fans out there, so well, I really want to hear
stories of people sleepwalking. Weird places are doing weird things.
Tell us what you ate. I'm very curious. Well see
also the disappointing thing if I started sleep eating, I
would be mad, not so much because of the caloric intake,
(21:21):
but because I wouldn't have been awake enough to enjoy
to enjoy all the cupcakes or pizza or something, and
also thinking about like what's in my cupboard though it
wouldn't be that exciting. I'd probably end up eating dry rice. Actually,
I was just thinking dried lentils, all right. So that's
been as you're sleepwalking stories Mom stuff at Discovery dot com,
(21:43):
and speaking of movies, as we have a couple of
times in this episode, before we get into listener mail,
we've got a quick word from one of our kindly sponsors, Netflix,
which helped bring you today's episode of Stuff Mom Never
told you. Today we were talking about sleep walking. So
(22:04):
if you want to watch something kind of related to that,
I've got an idea here. You should head over to
Netflix dot com and if you haven't seen it already,
watch Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. It's not exactly
about sleepwalking, but a it's an awesome film. Be Kate Winslet,
awesome lady, and Jim Carrey does a good job too,
(22:25):
and it's a compelling story kind of sleepwalking. Yes, it's
just what came to mind when I was thinking about
sleep walking and better Yet, when you go sign up
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(22:46):
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The thirty day free trial won't be around forever, so
head over to net Flix dot com slash mom, A,
S A P and sign up today. And also, this
offer is subject to availability. And now let's head back
(23:10):
to the letters. I got an email here for Melissa
about our matchmaking podcasts. She writes, I've had many a
disastrous relationship. None seemed to last much past a year,
if we even made it that far. Now, these were
all relationships I created myself, meaning no on the set
(23:30):
us up or conspired to get us together. However, once
I started going to a weekly stitching group, a lovely
lady there offered to set me up with a guy
she worked with. Naturally, I was skeptical, being the youngest
in the group and she had always talked about how
she worked with older people at her architecture firm. But
I was feeling brave and agreed. Luckily he turned out
to be just thirty at the time, and absolutely amazing.
(23:54):
We're still dating. It's been almost a year, and I've
never been happier or felt more content in a romantic
relation and ship. We have a lot of fun together
and I can really see spending years and years with
him and never being bored and discontent at least for long.
Funnily enough, we both have similar family backgrounds, education levels,
and personal ideals and morals. It's amazing how much things
(24:15):
as dull as this really do help, like you two
pointed out on the podcast, So I guess my story
at least would imply that you're common about sometimes not
knowing what we need is true. So thanks and good
luck with that relationship, Melissa. Okay, here's one from Rose
about our slumber party podcast, and I'm really glad she
sent this in because you know, we touched on like
(24:36):
cultural differences as far as attitudes towards slumber parties, and
she has a good story. So she says, uh, my
dad is originally from South America and was completely perplexed
when I started wanting to go to slumber parties around
age seven, I remember him saying things like, why would
you need to sleep at someone else's house? Is our
own house not good enough for you? My mom had
(24:57):
to explain to him this was a normal part of
a young girls social life in the US, and made
sure that I was able to both host and attend sleepovers.
I'm so glad I was able to have these events
as part of my childhood. Going to other people's houses,
eating their food, living by their rules for a night
was all interesting and fun. It was also a good
test of my manners and confidence comporting myself well in
(25:17):
someone else's home, and sure I got into some things
I never would have at home. I only ever saw
horror movies at Slummer parties, for example, who shows a
room full of nine year olds The Exorcist at bedtime?
But comparing my experiences and other homes to my own home,
I actually better understood the values my parents wanted me
to have and why our home ran the way it did.
(25:38):
So Thanks for the perspective, Rose, and thanks to everyone
who's written into Mom's Stuff at Discovery dot com or
follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast, or liked
us on Facebook. And you can also follow us now
on tumbler stuff Mom never told you. Dot tumbler dot
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(25:59):
And if you like to learn more about sleepwalking and
ambient go to our website and search ambience sleepwalking and
you'll find an article written by me. And that website,
of course, is how stuff works dot com. For more
on thiss and thousands of other topics, does it how
(26:19):
stuff works dot com.
Welcome to stuff Mom never told you. From how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and today we're talking about sleepwalking. Caroline,
did you ever sleepwalk once? Exactly? Well that I remember
(00:24):
you look so proud of yourself. I just think it's
ridiculous because I yeah, and it's sleepwalking. As we'll get into,
it's so common in children. But I only did it
once that I can call. And it's because I woke
up at the top of the stairs. Yeah, like I
had gotten out of bed and walked to the top
of the stairs. Was like, oh, I'm gonna go back
to bed. I did a lot of I do and
(00:44):
still do a lot of sleep hand movements. Like when
I worked for the newspaper, I would have these terrible
work stress dreams and wake up because I was using
my hands to lay out the newspaper. And and sometimes
I would wake myself up doing um sleep handwater guns.
That's awesome. That's officially the best sleep jet sure I've
(01:06):
ever heard of. Yeah, but no, no, no sleepwalking stories
beyond that. Listen. I don't want to one up you.
But I slept walked sleepwalked. Is that the past tense leepwalked?
I sleep walked as a child A lot, kind of
a lot it was, only it was it was a
fairly brief face. I'm thinking maybe I don't know six
(01:28):
months to a year, but it happened a lot when
it started, and I vaguely remember. And maybe I say
I remember because my siblings thought that it was polarious
the next day, um, because I had we had a
pet ferret. And there, I mean, I can hear like
a collective. Yeah, I just made a face. We had
(01:51):
a pet ferret. And I got up out of bed,
and my my parents live in the like a ranch
style house with a really long haul. It's a long, long,
lean house. And my my room was at one end
of the hall, and so I got up, started walking
on the hall, be lined over to my ferrets cage,
grabbed my ferret and kept on walking up to the
(02:15):
living room, where presumably the older members of the family,
older siblings and my parents were up watching TV or something.
And I walked up to my oldest sister and I
held out my ferret and I asked her what kind
of plant it was, at which point she realized that
I was sleepwalking. And so the cure for my sleepwalking
(02:37):
always if if I went to my parents room, because inevitably,
with like four siblings, you know, I'm going to run
into somebody at some point in the house. So let
someone to run into me. They would take me to
the bathroom. It would score me to my bathroom and uh,
and I would pee and I go back to bed.
Would be great. Um. So so that was my sleepwalking.
(02:58):
But I don't think that it has happen and since then,
and I really hope it doesn't happen now because I
live alone and that would be weird. Yeah, get up
and bother your neighbors about their pets. Excuse me, Look
at a plant do you have? I'm holding like a
feral cat in the neighborhood. So why don't we figure
(03:20):
out what was going on with these Parasomnia's nice word,
which are disruptive sleep disorders, including sleep walking, which occurred
during arousals from either rem sleep or partial arousals from
non rem sleep. And since we've talked about parasomnia, is
also sleep walking, specifically as a parasomnia referred to as somnambulism.
(03:45):
Sounds so nice, So anyone's stating for their g R
or s a t out there somnambulism. Yeah. And if
anybody wants to come up with a word for sleep
finger guns, let me know. Um. So, sleep walking most
often occur is during the deep non REM sleep early
in the night. But if it occurs during REM sleep,
(04:06):
it's actually part of REM behavior disorder intends to happen
near morning. So years happened mine would be at night.
It would be within the first couple of hours of
me falling asleep. Um. And when it happens in the
during the REM cycle later on in the night or
into the early morning, it's actually more dangerous. And one
(04:26):
thing that got us thinking about sleepwalking to I went
to go see Mike Barbiglia of This American Life Fame,
What's Up Other awesome podcast and radio show. I saw
his movie Sleepwalk with Me, which is about his REM
behavior disordered sleepwalk. Didn't he walk through a window in
which he ends up walking through a window? Actually, well,
(04:48):
he ran through a window because I think he needs
some from the Marsha to get you through a plane
of glass. Um. But typically these bouts will last ten
minutes or less, and it's most commonly seen in kids,
it's ages eight to twelve, but it can happen obviously
at any age, as can sleep, water guns, Yeah, exactly,
(05:09):
or sleep newspaper designing. Um and children see there. The
thing is, they're not sure exactly what causes sleepwalking. It's
just it's super common. Your brain is just doing something weird.
But they think in children it's possibly related to fatigue
and lack of sleep or anxiety. In adults, they tend
to tie it to alcohol, sedatives, or other medications like
(05:30):
ambient and specifically which we'll get into, also medical conditions
and mental disorders. In the elderly, it can be a
symptom of organic brain syndrome, also known as just having
basically decreased mental function due to a disease of some
kind or rim behavior disorders. Yeah. And one of the
more recent findings about this is that sleepwalking is in
(05:53):
fact hereditary, which means if I have a child, oh man,
their door, does anyone does your mother or father's sleepwalk?
I don't think so. As far as I know, I was,
I've been the only child in my family to exhibit sleepwalking. Um.
But maybe maybe you had famous sleepwalking grandparents, famous ones
that I don't know about them. But there was a
(06:17):
study that came out in two thousand eleven from the
Washington University School of Medicine, UH, in which they studied
four generations of a sleep walking family. I kind of
it was a great study background just because it was
all about this family of sleepwalkers, intense sleepwalkers. There go
the Smiths walking down the street again or all in
(06:40):
their pajamas. Uh. And they were able to trace this
sleep walking down to a section of chromosome twenty. But
they're not sure which jean exactly was responsible for the
sleepwalking because on chromosome twenty you got a bunch of
jeans still to choose from all these genes. Yeah, and
then stamp for it in spring twelve fact us up
(07:01):
they found it more than a third of sleepwalkers do
have a family history of the disorder, which is very interesting. Yeah,
supposedly someone with the gene I E me, surely I
have this gene. I mean, and I'm not just trying
to like be a well, I must have this gene.
But I assume that I have this gene, uh, my
offspring will have a fifty percent chance of getting it.
(07:25):
I kind of hope that if I do have a kid,
one of them does, because that sounds hilarious, like a
kid walking around with pets asking strange questions. UM. But
in terms of gender, it's probably not going to make
much of a difference if I were to have a
boy child or a girl child, because a lot of
these studies say that there's no gender component to it.
(07:46):
Although a study published in Neurology UH had something different
to say. Yeah, it found that childhood sleepwalking was significantly
more frequent in women. Um. They found that it occurred
often in two point eight percent of women and just
two percent of men, and sometimes in six point nine
(08:08):
percent of women and five point seven percent of men.
So not a huge difference, but this study did point
out there was a bit of a difference for women. Yeah,
And I think it's worth noting too that that study
was based on data from the finished twin cohort that
followed around I think it was something around a lot
(08:29):
of people pairs of of finished twins, and it's it's
often used as a really solid data set for UM
kind of figuring out behavioral patterns. But again, you know,
a lot of times we'll still see no no gender component. Um,
but what do sleepwalkers do besides finger guns? Yes? I
(08:51):
mean really, they just get up and walk around. Yeah,
you know, there's often the kind of the film trope
of walking around like a zombie. It was um step
others where they get up and throw all their presents
on the Christmas tree in their parents room. Have you
seen that? No? I have not seen that recommend YouTube.
Um but a lot of times the symptoms of sleepwalking.
I find it kind of funny that they are symptoms
(09:11):
of sleepwalking. Would the symptoms be walking around when you're
sleep but thank you Mayo Clinic for clearing things up,
acting confused or disoriented when they wake up, having a
blank look on their face. What kind of plant is it?
Would I imagine opening their eyes during sleep, not remembering
the sleepwalking episode and saying, here we go, saying things
(09:34):
that don't make sense. Yeah. Well, my freshman roommate didn't sleepwalk.
I don't think it would have been possible, actually, because
our dorm room was so small. But she would sleep
talk all the time. And that girl would wake me
up having conversations and I'd set up and be like,
what what what did you say? And She's like the eggs.
Did you get the eggs? We they're green, we need
(09:54):
to cook them. And she would have a whole conversation
about the flipping eggs, and I'd be like, God, Lauren,
I got a test in the morning, and then you'd
wake up wanting egg Yeah. God, a cycle just created
a cycle. But sleepwalkers can get themselves into troubles. But
really the only potential complication from sleepwalking is hurting yourself
(10:17):
if you had kept going over the cliff when roll
down those stairs. Um, one time I was in my sleep.
I don't know that this could be attributed to sleepwalking,
but I did roll off the top bunk and fall
onto onto my desk chair. Child. Did you break yourself? No,
but I got a pretty sweet bruise. It looks kind
of cool. Um. And it's also it's not dangerous. This
(10:38):
is a big myth. It's out there. It is not
dangerous to wake up a sleepwalker. Yeah. I think the
worst that you would get is them being really kind
of scared and confused as to why they're standing up
in the hall with a ferret. Yeah, but it'll it'll
it fades away. Um. And according to the National Sleep Foundation,
about ten percent of Americans reports some erratic nighttime behaviors
(11:01):
like eating, walking, talking, having sex, or even becoming violent
when they're sleep. Yeah, we haven't even touched on and
aren't going to in this episode touched on night terrors
and sleep violence. I've had one night r I get.
I don't know why I have these, like individual little things,
but I'll save it. It just didn't really involve me
sitting up screaming and the being like, oh, okay, well anyway,
(11:23):
but yes, the one that I think is the most entertaining,
I'm I'm really sorry if that's insensitive. But one that
I think is interesting, I guess I should say is
a sleep related eating disorder. And so this is coming
I got. I got my info from an ABC News
article about it that found that more than a million
Americans suffer from this really strange affliction, and most of
(11:46):
them are women. I don't know what's up with that,
but basically, these people get up in the middle of
night do their sleepwalking thing, but instead of just you know,
wandering around like zombies, they go to the kitchen. They
either fix themselves food or they eat stuff out of
the fridge, or they make like a cat food sandwich
because they really don't know what they're doing and they
just eat and eat and eat and then just go
(12:08):
back to bed. Yeah, and for some people this obviously
can be a problem. There was one woman profiled who
had gained sixty pounds as a result of sleep eating.
And while Dr Carlos Shank, the author of Sleep, The Mysteries,
the Problems, and the Solutions, said that sleep eating is
a result of a major quote physiological force coming from
(12:29):
deep within your brain and body to eat so inappropriately.
But it probably also has something to do with this
chemical lepton, because lepton is what is released in our
brains during sleep to suppress hunger, because that would be awful.
If we could get hungry while we were sleeping, I
would never sleep. Um. And so there there must be
(12:51):
something with part of the brain, possibly the gabble one
neurotransmitter that helps control the kind of sleep process in
the brain coming awake and kicking that leapton back in
without us knowing it. Yeah. So, and it's funny because
in the story they talked about how people tend to
go for like the cheesy poofs, you know, and not
(13:12):
instead of the apple because your whole you don't have
any It's not like you're judging. You're not making a
judgment call of like, you know what, I'm sleep eating,
I should probably have that banana. Yeah, your frontal cortex
that makes all of those like rational decisions between you know,
vegetables versus a milkshake. That's sleeping it's thinking about water guns. Um.
(13:35):
And this is part of the reason why there was
a rash of in the mid two thousands of ambient
it's a sleeping pill ambient related driving arrests because these
people were taking ambient and doing all sorts of crazy
things like driving. Eating was a big problem, having sex
and having no idea that they were doing all of this.
(13:56):
And as far as the eating goes, they thought the
there's a study done on it and they found that
an active ingredient and ambient tinkered with the lefton yeah,
which I immediately looked at my ambient bottle and was like,
O God, what have I done. Um, I really don't
think I've done anything weird because I just don't that
I know of. You don't wake up with like pepperoni
(14:19):
stuck to your cheek, well, I mean like that's a
Saturday night, But yeah, it is scary what ambient can do.
I mean they talk about people, you know, getting in
their car and driving and running into other cars, hitting
telephone poles, things like that. And when the cops come that,
you know, they just assume you're you're drunk or you're
high on something, and so like, how do you how
do you test for ambient? I don't know. Maybe if
they start talking about ferrets are doing finger water guns, well,
(14:42):
you know what, I kind of made it poked a
little fun at the symptoms of sleepwalking. Maybe it's good
that those exist because maybe the you know, those are
the signs if someone the police should listen to our podcast.
Uh And since we've mentioned s a t words earlier
with somnambulism in paris, omnia's very briefly, people who have
sex in their sleep. They exhibit somnambulistic sexual behavior, otherwise
(15:09):
known as sexomnia. I just wanted to say all of
that out loud. Somnambulistic sexual behavior of sexomnia sounds like
a hex So how many of us, and by us,
I mean adults are doing this because a lot of
times kids will age out of sleepwalking, But how many
(15:31):
of us do this? Well, it's actually got a pretty
high lifetime rate people who have experienced it, but the
amount of adults who currently sleepwalk is pretty low. Um.
Going back to that Stanford study from spring of three
points six percent of US adults or eight point four
million people reported sleepwalking at least once in the previous year,
(15:51):
with one percent saying they had had two or more
episodes in one month. Yeah, the lifetime prevalence, like you said,
it's pretty high at twenty nine point two per cent.
And sleepwalking once like you did, out of the norm, Caroline,
because just over eighty percent of those who have sleepwalked
reported they've done so another time in the past five years.
(16:17):
And there are some conditions that are associated too with
sleepwalking behavior, not just the you know, the eating and
walking and talking, but things like sleep disordered breathing. Right,
This is a group of disorders characterized by, as you
would think, abnormal breathing patterns during sleep, most commonly obstructive
sleep apnea. And very interesting study that confirmed the importance
(16:40):
of correcting sleep problems in children. This is in pediatrics
in two thousand three. Children with chronic parasomnias may often
also present sleep disordered breathing or restless restless leg syndrome.
To a lesser extent, They found that frequent episodes of
sleepwalking could result from allergies, swollen tonsils, and other factors
that interfere with three eating. But once they had their
(17:02):
tonsils and or adnoids removed, fix the problem. Yeah, so
all their sleep disservances were gone. Yeah, so doctors should.
The researchers were hoping to like out of this pediatric
study that they could convince doctors to pay closer attention
to those kinds of breathing problems and kids. Um and
speaking of kids, migraines have been implicated. There were several
(17:25):
studies from the eighties showing that kids with migraines were
more likely to sleepwalk than were kids with other types
of headaches or even seizures. They also found that sleepwalking
was more common in kids who had migraines with aura
as opposed to migraines without OORA Like I get migraines
with aura, I get the whole, Like I get traveling numbness,
I get the lights and the party streamers in my vision,
(17:47):
I get numbness along my jaw. Whereas these kids who
don't have aura, would just be like hit with a migraine.
Another study found that a greater percentage of adults with
migraines were sleepwalkers compared to adults with just allergies. So
there's something going on in the brain. It's amazing though that,
like I because I currently have a cold or I
have you know, pretty much gotten over it. But so
(18:08):
I'm having sleep issues right now and I'm a migraine suffer.
It's just weird that I don't sleepwalk. I feel like
I should. Maybe it's only a matter of time. Caroline
dum Dum dumb Well. Mental health issues too seem to
have one of the strongest relationships to sleep walking um
and with For people with depression, for instance, they are
(18:29):
three and a half times more likely to sleepwalk than
those without it, and people who are taking s sr
EYES for depression are three times more likely to sleepwalk
twice a month are or more. And it's not necessarily
the the s sr I antidepressants that are increasing the
risk of sleepwalking. They still think that it's something to
(18:50):
do with the depression, right, And there's also an interesting
link with obsessive compulsive disorder. They found that people with
O c D are seven times more likely to sleep walk,
So that's that's nuts. It's also more likely for those
with alcohol abuse or dependence, and uh, there could be
there could be a schizophrenia link. An article in the
(19:10):
British Journal of psycho Psychiatry in April found that schizophrenics
have sleep problems and that could have to do with
you know, all their sleep patterns are all messed up.
It's not like, you know, you want to go to
bed eleven o'clock, you sleep through the night, you have
your rem sleep, you get up at seven or whatever. Like.
They have a definite um kind of a mixed up
(19:31):
sleep patterns. So they also exhibit sleepwalking. And in the
ultimate twist of irony, people who take sleep medication are
two and a half times more likely to sleep walk
more than twice a month than people who don't take them.
So that kind of relates back to what we were
talking about with ambient. You take something to fall asleep.
At least you might get some exercise, or you might
(19:53):
eat a dozen donuts. Yeah, maybe you'll You'll walk to
the car to drive to Rispy Cream to eat the doughnuts,
drive back there you go, or you might drive to
Tim Horton's if you're one of our Canadian listeners, what
what Canada reference? Boom dropping truth bombs? So I think
(20:15):
that sums up our our sleepwalk. The thing is, we
still have an answered why it happens. We know that
it has something to do with this chromosome twenty, something
to do with passing it being passed along through our
family lines, and something to do with being a kid,
and maybe something to do with if you're an adult
(20:36):
who sleep box. Could be a mental health depression, sleep medication, alcohol, Okay,
a lot of things. It could be anything, is what
we're saying. Um But if you do want to see
um a a funny depiction of sleepwalking like real something
that happened in real life. I do recommend go see
a sleepwalk with me. I enjoyed it. It was fun.
(20:59):
And there's an Ira Glass cameo for this American Life
fans out there, so well, I really want to hear
stories of people sleepwalking. Weird places are doing weird things.
Tell us what you ate. I'm very curious. Well see
also the disappointing thing if I started sleep eating, I
would be mad, not so much because of the caloric intake,
(21:21):
but because I wouldn't have been awake enough to enjoy
to enjoy all the cupcakes or pizza or something, and
also thinking about like what's in my cupboard though it
wouldn't be that exciting. I'd probably end up eating dry rice. Actually,
I was just thinking dried lentils, all right. So that's
been as you're sleepwalking stories Mom stuff at Discovery dot com,
(21:43):
and speaking of movies, as we have a couple of
times in this episode, before we get into listener mail,
we've got a quick word from one of our kindly sponsors, Netflix,
which helped bring you today's episode of Stuff Mom Never
told you. Today we were talking about sleep walking. So
(22:04):
if you want to watch something kind of related to that,
I've got an idea here. You should head over to
Netflix dot com and if you haven't seen it already,
watch Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. It's not exactly
about sleepwalking, but a it's an awesome film. Be Kate Winslet,
awesome lady, and Jim Carrey does a good job too,
(22:25):
and it's a compelling story kind of sleepwalking. Yes, it's
just what came to mind when I was thinking about
sleep walking and better Yet, when you go sign up
at Netflix dot com as a new member and a
stuff mom never told you listener, you can get a
free thirty day trial membership. Just go to Netflix dot
(22:46):
com slash mom and sign up. That's Netflix dot com
slash mom, and be sure to use that U r
L so they know that we've sent you over there.
The thirty day free trial won't be around forever, so
head over to net Flix dot com slash mom, A,
S A P and sign up today. And also, this
offer is subject to availability. And now let's head back
(23:10):
to the letters. I got an email here for Melissa
about our matchmaking podcasts. She writes, I've had many a
disastrous relationship. None seemed to last much past a year,
if we even made it that far. Now, these were
all relationships I created myself, meaning no on the set
(23:30):
us up or conspired to get us together. However, once
I started going to a weekly stitching group, a lovely
lady there offered to set me up with a guy
she worked with. Naturally, I was skeptical, being the youngest
in the group and she had always talked about how
she worked with older people at her architecture firm. But
I was feeling brave and agreed. Luckily he turned out
to be just thirty at the time, and absolutely amazing.
(23:54):
We're still dating. It's been almost a year, and I've
never been happier or felt more content in a romantic
relation and ship. We have a lot of fun together
and I can really see spending years and years with
him and never being bored and discontent at least for long.
Funnily enough, we both have similar family backgrounds, education levels,
and personal ideals and morals. It's amazing how much things
(24:15):
as dull as this really do help, like you two
pointed out on the podcast, So I guess my story
at least would imply that you're common about sometimes not
knowing what we need is true. So thanks and good
luck with that relationship, Melissa. Okay, here's one from Rose
about our slumber party podcast, and I'm really glad she
sent this in because you know, we touched on like
(24:36):
cultural differences as far as attitudes towards slumber parties, and
she has a good story. So she says, uh, my
dad is originally from South America and was completely perplexed
when I started wanting to go to slumber parties around
age seven, I remember him saying things like, why would
you need to sleep at someone else's house? Is our
own house not good enough for you? My mom had
(24:57):
to explain to him this was a normal part of
a young girls social life in the US, and made
sure that I was able to both host and attend sleepovers.
I'm so glad I was able to have these events
as part of my childhood. Going to other people's houses,
eating their food, living by their rules for a night
was all interesting and fun. It was also a good
test of my manners and confidence comporting myself well in
(25:17):
someone else's home, and sure I got into some things
I never would have at home. I only ever saw
horror movies at Slummer parties, for example, who shows a
room full of nine year olds The Exorcist at bedtime?
But comparing my experiences and other homes to my own home,
I actually better understood the values my parents wanted me
to have and why our home ran the way it did.
(25:38):
So Thanks for the perspective, Rose, and thanks to everyone
who's written into Mom's Stuff at Discovery dot com or
follow us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast, or liked
us on Facebook. And you can also follow us now
on tumbler stuff Mom never told you. Dot tumbler dot
com is a delightfully fun destination for your Internet travels.
(25:59):
And if you like to learn more about sleepwalking and
ambient go to our website and search ambience sleepwalking and
you'll find an article written by me. And that website,
of course, is how stuff works dot com. For more
on thiss and thousands of other topics, does it how
(26:19):
stuff works dot com.
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