What is it?
Actually Sleep Eating Disorder (SED) is more often considered a sleep disorder than an eating disorder But, as the consequences show it is both. It is also frequently referred to as Sleep-Related Eating Disorder(S-RED) or sometimes as Nocturnal Sleep-Related Disorder(NS-RED)
It is a condition in which a person gets up to consume food during the night. It is an involuntary/unconscious action and the person has no recollection of the episode when they awake.
The amounts of food consumed tend to be large and as such make it difficult for the afflicted person to accept that it was all eaten by them. When they finally do, it can be embarassing. It can also be frightening especially for people who leave by themselves and always wake up to find missing food plus signs of activity around the kitchen or dining areas and yet have no memory of being the doers of everything they see
Medical research into sleep eating disorder has shown that sufferers tend to consume high fat and high sugar foods. On a number of occasions some people have been show to get up and walk or drive to 24-hour fast food store, eat in or take out food and still have no memory of the episode.
Given what has been defined of SED above, it should not be confused with Nocturnal Eating Syndrome (NES), where a person compulsively and consciously wakes up at night to consume food. The types of foods consumed may tend to be the same but the conditions are different and should be dealt with differently.