Friday, October 15, 2004
Australians may have a new excuse for infidelity: "sleep sex."
That's the diagnosis given to an otherwise respectable Sydney-area woman who snuck out at night to have sex with random strangers while her live-in boyfriend slept at home.
"Incredulity is the first staging post for anyone involved in this," admitted Peter Buchanan, the diagnosing physician and a sleep specialist at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (search). "One has to maintain a healthy degree of skepticism."
But, Buchanan told the Sydney Morning Herald, the woman wasn't covering up run-of-the-mill infidelity. She was genuinely unaware of her activities. Even her boyfriend took a while to catch on.
"He was aware of some sleepwalking and there was circumstantial evidence, including the unexplained presence of condoms around the house," Buchanan explained. "On one occasion he awoke to find her absent from the bedroom and searched until he found her — engaged in such activity."
Although "sleep sex" isn't listed in the International Classification of Sleep Disorders (search), Buchanan said, the recently identified parasomnia — a sleep disorder involving wakeful behavior, such as walking or talking — was gaining recognition worldwide from specialists.
A Stanford University study published in 2002 related nearly a dozen cases of the disorder, some of which involved unconscious aggression or sexual violence towards regular partners.
None of those cases, however, involved active seeking out of new partners.
In the Sydney woman's case, Buchanan said tests showed she would often become active from a state of deep sleep without passing through the normal stages of gradually waking up, a common sign of parasomnia (search).
Buchanan told the newspaper the woman had been successfully treated through psychotherapy, and planned to relate the case to this weekend's annual conference of the Australasian Sleep Association (search).
see the story here http://www.foxnews.com
Australians may have a new excuse for infidelity: "sleep sex."
That's the diagnosis given to an otherwise respectable Sydney-area woman who snuck out at night to have sex with random strangers while her live-in boyfriend slept at home.
"Incredulity is the first staging post for anyone involved in this," admitted Peter Buchanan, the diagnosing physician and a sleep specialist at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (search). "One has to maintain a healthy degree of skepticism."
But, Buchanan told the Sydney Morning Herald, the woman wasn't covering up run-of-the-mill infidelity. She was genuinely unaware of her activities. Even her boyfriend took a while to catch on.
"He was aware of some sleepwalking and there was circumstantial evidence, including the unexplained presence of condoms around the house," Buchanan explained. "On one occasion he awoke to find her absent from the bedroom and searched until he found her — engaged in such activity."
Although "sleep sex" isn't listed in the International Classification of Sleep Disorders (search), Buchanan said, the recently identified parasomnia — a sleep disorder involving wakeful behavior, such as walking or talking — was gaining recognition worldwide from specialists.
A Stanford University study published in 2002 related nearly a dozen cases of the disorder, some of which involved unconscious aggression or sexual violence towards regular partners.
None of those cases, however, involved active seeking out of new partners.
In the Sydney woman's case, Buchanan said tests showed she would often become active from a state of deep sleep without passing through the normal stages of gradually waking up, a common sign of parasomnia (search).
Buchanan told the newspaper the woman had been successfully treated through psychotherapy, and planned to relate the case to this weekend's annual conference of the Australasian Sleep Association (search).
see the story here http://www.foxnews.com
