Nocturnal eating: Prevalence, features and night sleep among Binge Eating Disorder and Bulimia Nervosa patients in Israel

Objective: Nocturnal Eating Syndrome (NES) is a rare clinical syndrome comprising both eating and sleeping disorders. Binge Eating Disorder (BED) and Bulimia Nervosa (BN) have similar clinical features characterized by uncontrolled binge eating episodes. Nocturnal Eating Syndrome among BED and BN patients entails binge eating episodes after sleep onset. The aim of this study was to examine differences between BN and BED patients with respect to nocturnal sleep-related eating disorders. Method: Twelve BED and 10 BN patients suffering from nocturnal binge eating were studied. All patients were monitored by the Actigraph for 1 week and completed the Mini-Sleep Questionnaire in addition to providing demographic and clinical data. Results: The objective sleep monitoring presented no significant differences between BN and BED despite differences in demographic and clinical data. Discussion: To our knowledge, this study is the first investigation to compare BED and BN patients who suffered from nocturnal binge eating episodes. The results may represent a new subgroup of nocturnal sleep and eating disorders.