People who suffer from certain types of sleep disorders are likely to have a risk of exhibiting inappropriate sexual behaviors during their sleep, according to a new study appearing in the journal Sleep.
This phenomenon called "sexsomnia" or "sleepsex" is occurring with increasing frequency among patients prompting experts to define it along with some parameters. Sleepsex involves either masturbating or making advances even while in deep sleep, the study said.
Sleepsex is often mentioned in the same set of disorders which include sleepwalking, sleep talking and night terrors. A collective term used for the above conditions is parasomnia.
Lead researcher Dr. Carlos H. Schenck of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center said that some inappropriate sexual behaviors occur during wakefulness as well. "We wanted to call attention to how virtually all known categories of sleep disorders carry a risk for inappropriate sexual behaviors," said Schenck.
He gave an example called Kleine-Levin syndrome in which affected patients could sleep for 16 to 18 hours at a stretch, but when awake could indulge in "hypersexual" behavior. "Basically, an alarm rings in their nervous system when it shouldn't ring, and they have this partial awakening. It's a twilight state," he said, adding that such people might harm themselves because they have no control over their behavior.
The study said that clonazepam (Klonopin) could take care of such problems in 90 percent of the cases.
