Jill was in middle school when she began eating in her sleep. Despite carrying the food back to her bed to devour night after night, she didn’t have a clue about what she had done until the next morning.
“I would wake up with these containers or wrappers from an entire box of crackers or cookies on my bed or by the side of my bed,” said Jill, now 62, who lives an hour away from Minneapolis. Due to stigma and misunderstanding about sleep eating, CNN agreed not to use her last name.
“A lot of people think this condition is, ‘Oh, you get up and you have a snack and then you go back to bed.’ Well, that’s not what this is. This is a whole other animal,” Jill said of her unconscious nocturnal behaviors.
“I don’t just get up once and take a bite of this or that,” she said. “I can eat a whole package of cookies, then get up again and have four bowls of cereal, then get up again and have an entire box of graham crackers. And it is always junky junk food, never, ‘Oh, I’m going to have an apple.’”
“I’m very, very, very grateful that I finally found someone who understands what I am going through,” Jill said. “I know there are thousands of people out there suffering just like me, and my heart goes out to them. It is a tough journey to go through.”
“I’m very, very, very grateful that I finally found someone who understands what I am going through,”／The Blue Diamond Gallery
Her advice to others? Be your own best advocate, she said. Do research and read what you can about the disorder so you know the right questions to ask the doctor. And above all, she said, request a prescription for a sleep study to find out what is triggering the behavior.
“Don’t let doctors put you down, blow you off or make you feel bad,” she said. “One doctor might not want to do a sleep study, so find another doctor that will.
“Just keep fighting until you get the right doctor. Get a second opinion, even a third opinion if you think you need to. Just don’t give up.”
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