Study Links Ambien Use to Unconscious Food Forays By STEPHANIE SAUL
The sleeping pill Ambien seems to unlock a primitive desire to eat in some patients, according to emerging medical case studies that describe how the drug's users sometimes sleepwalk into their kitchens, claw through their refrigerators like animals and consume calories ranging into the thousands.
The next morning, the night eaters remember nothing about their foraging. But they wake up to find telltale clues: mouthfuls of peanut butter, Tostitos in their beds, kitchen counters overflowing with flour, missing food, and even lighted ovens and stoves. Some are so embarrassed, they delay telling anyone, even as they gain weight.
"These people are hell-bent to eat," said Dr. Mark Mahowald, who is director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Minneapolis and is researching the problem.
He and colleagues are preparing a scientific paper based on their findings that a sleep-related eating disorder is one of the unusual side effects showing up with the widespread use of Ambien. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., have made similar findings.
A woman in Salinas, Calif., whose case is to be included in the Minnesota study, said she would awaken to find candy bar wrappers next to her bed and Popsicle sticks on the floor near the refrigerator. She blamed her husband and sons before finally believing their claims that she was eating at night, unaware.
Worried that she would choke, "my son was so afraid at night, he'd come sit by the bed and watch me," said the woman, Brenda Pobre, 54. Despite seeing several doctors, Ms. Pobre did not link Ambien to her nocturnal eating until after she gained 100 pounds.
Spurred in part by consumer advertising, more than 26 million prescriptions for Ambien were dispensed in this country last year, an increase of 53 percent since 2001.
more at: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/health/14sleep.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print -- Jim Devine / "There can be no real individual freedom in the presence of economic insecurity." -- Chester Bowles