Sexsomnia Determined to be Real and Growing Disorder

The results of a new study reveals that having sex while sleeping has become a frequent complaint and is a growing disorder. Almost 8% of those referred to a sleep disorder clinic said that they had experienced sexual behavior while asleep – 75% of the complaints were made by men.

Researchers from the Sleep Research Laboratory compiled data from 832 sleep disorder patients who were questioned about possible sexual behavior in their sleep. Behaviors ranged from masturbation to full on sexual intercourse. Since the participants in the study were all patients already suffering from some sort of sleep disorder, the data cannot be extrapolated over the rest of the population where researchers believe sexsomnia would affect a much lower percentage.

Sexsomnia is the latest identified subset of parasomnia, a sleep disorder characterized by unwanted behaviors that occur while sleeping. Several common behaviors are grinding the teeth, opening your eyes while still asleep or talking. More unusal forms could be getting up to clean or eating while you’re asleep.

Those who suffer from sexsomnia, or any type of parasomnia, are completely unaware of their actions and have no memory of the behavior after waking. This leads one to wonder if there isn’t more cases that go unreported due to being unobserved, like with people who live alone.

Out of the 8% of those in the study who admitted to sexsomnia, only 4 had actually mentioned it when consulting with a sleep specialist. Interestingly, out of those with sexsomnia versus those without it, the patients with sexsomniac symptoms who admitted to doing illegal drugs were twice the number of those without that sleep symptom.

This study was presented at the recent SLEEP 2010 held at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.