We’ve all heard about sleep talking and even sleep walking but those are not the only sleep disorders out there. The same family of sleep disorders, called parasomnias, includes a very different type of sleep activity: sexsomnia. People who suffer from sexsomnia have sex or masturbate during their sleep but remember nothing about it when they wake up.
“These are disorders of arousal”, Dr. Carlos Schenck, a professor and senior staff psychiatrist at the Hennepin County Medical Center at the University of Minnesota, told CNN. “They most often occur during the slowest, deepest stage of sleep, called delta sleep. It’s like an alarm or trigger goes off in the central nervous system, and you go from your basement to your roof in no time flat. Your cognition is deeply asleep, and you’re not with the program, but your body is activated. That’s dangerous because then you start walking and running and doing all sorts of things without your mind being awake.”
Just like sleep walkers, not all those who suffer from sexsomnia are aware of the fact they have the condition. More often than not, they are actually unaware of it – unless they hurt themselves at some point or a partner notices the strange behaviour. And yet, according to a study from 2010, around 7% of adults suffered from sexsomnia at some point in their lives and around 3% are currently living with the condition. Another study, by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, showed that 8% of patients in sleeping facilities exhibited symptoms of the disorder.
“We don’t know the ultimate cause, but there is a genetic component”, Schenck said. “If you have at least one first-degree family relative with a parasomnia, you are more likely to develop one. Then the more first- or second-degree relatives that have a parasomnia, the more likely the condition may persist into adulthood or reoccur.”
Moreover, according to a 2007 study, the disorder seems to be more frequent in men than in women. Some other underlying conditions and risk factors, such as obstructive sleep apnea and chronic insomnia, also seem to be associated with sexsomnia.
Even though the disorder can be harmless, in some cases, it can be very problematic. Spouses forcing their partners to have sex, people waking up from an episode of sexsomnia and not realising they were the ones asking their partner to have sex, people forcing themselves upon strangers or minors… The list of sexsomnia-cases gone wrong goes on and on, while the shame when patients get confronted with their condition by others is yet another issue.
