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Night eating and nosology

International Journal of Obesity volume 26, page 588 (2002)Cite this article

The report by Cerú-Björk, Andersson and Rossner on ‘Night eating and nocturnal eating’ raises critical questions of nosology.1 The authors consider distinguishing two disorders of eating: ‘night eating’ and ‘nocturnal eating’. Their criteria for night eating are those first proposed in 1955: morning anorexia, evening hyperphagia and insomnia.2 Their criteria for nocturnal eating are ‘waking up at night and getting out of bed to eat’ and/or ‘after having gone to bed, getting out of bed to eat or eating in bed’. In their study of 194 patients the authors reported that many people who overeat in the evening also awake to eat and vice versa and that the boundary between the two patterns is not well defined. Awakening to eat was not included as a criterion in our 1955 paper, but these awakenings featured prominently in the 1999 report by Birketvedt et al.3 That report included evening hyperphagia and awakening as diagnostic aspects of the night eating syndrome. Cerú-Björk et al appear to agree; after noting the two periods of eating they conclude that ‘there is more to unite the two syndromes than there are differences between them’.

The use of the term ‘nocturnal eating’ in the paper by Cerú-Björk et al is derived from the ‘nocturnal sleep-related eating disorder’ identified in a sleep laboratory and reported by Schenck et al in 19914 and extensively reviewed by Schenck and Mahowald in 1994.5 This disorder, diagnosed definitively only by polysomnography, occurred in 68% of their cases of sleepwalking, with clouded consciousness in most. Its prevalence (0.5%, 38 cases out of approximately 8000 polysomnographic examinations) is far lower than that of the night eating syndrome The clouded consciousness in this disorder, and its very low prevalence, appear to differentiate it from the night eating syndrome. The level of consciousness of all persons who report night eating should be determined, as this feature is critical in the differential diagnosis between the night eating syndrome and nocturnal sleep-related eating disorders.

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References

  1. Cerú-Björk C, Andersson I, Rossner S . Night eating and nocturnal eating—two different or similar syndromes among obese patients? Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord 2001 25: 365–372.

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  2. Stunkard AJ, Grace WJ, Wolff HG . The night eating syndrome: a pattern of food intake among certain obese patients Am J Med 1955 19: 78–86.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

    A Stunkard & G Stoa Birketvedt

  2. Department of Internal Medicine, The Mt Sinai School of Medicine New York, New York, USA

    G Stoa Birketvedt

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  1. A Stunkard
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  2. G Stoa Birketvedt
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Stunkard, A., Stoa Birketvedt, G. Night eating and nosology. Int J Obes 26, 588 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ijo.0801818

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