Why Sleep Disorder Sufferers May Beat Up Bedmates

Jan. 30 -- Jeannie Gibbs Replogle used to find it hard to sleep in the same bed as her husband, and it wasn't because he snored or hogged the blankets. Instead — out of the blue — he would start pummeling her.

"To have him beat me up in the middle of the night was very mysterious. And I tended to take it personally," she told Good Morning America. "Why is this guy punching me, when he's allegedly asleep?"

For most of us, getting a good night's sleep is something we take for granted — but for tens of thousands a good night's sleep is something they can only dream about. These people suffer from "parasomnia" or "disorders of arousal," a sort of limbo between sleep and wake cycles.

‘I Would Lash Out’

For sufferers, sleep is a time of out-of-control behavior, filled with bouts of eating, walking and even smoking. Replogle suffers from a particularly dramatic form of parasomnia, known as REM Sleep Behavior Disorder, or RBD.

People with RBD tend to kick, punch, and shout in their sleep. It is dangerous for them, and for anyone who shares the same bed. Experts at the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Minneapolis say that 0.5 percent of the entire U.S. adult population deals with RBD.

The Replogles spent years struggling with Coy Replogle's troubling sleep disorder. It surfaced several times a week — often in the form of a disturbing dream, in which he was being surrounded by menacing figures.

"I would lash out at them, and sometimes I'd hit Jeannie," Coy Replogle said.

In 1988, a time when experts were just beginning to understand the phenomenon of RBD, the Replogles sought help at the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center.

Brain’s Missed Signals

For most people during REM, or the "rapid eye movement" phases of sleep, nerve cells in the brain send certain "inhibitory" signals to the rest of the body, and the only muscles that move are those for breathing and eye movement.

But for those with RBD, the brain fails to send those signals, and there is no inhibition of movement. Doctors at the sleep center prescribed clonazepam — a sedative — which quickly brought Replogle's RBD episodes under control.