Sleep Eaters Have No Idea They're Eating

April 29, 2006 — -- Ever since she was little, Amy Koecheler, a 22-year-old college senior in Eau Claire, Wis., has done something unusual: In the middle of the night, she gets out of bed to eat, without even waking up.

It is called sleep eating, which is a parasomnia, meaning an abnormal behavior during sleep. It's triggered by stress, alcohol, sleeping pills or, in Koecheler's case, genetics.

She isn't conscious during her nocturnal noshing, and has no memories, despite all the times she's done it.

"Not until the next morning, when I saw the evidence of the bowl from my cereal, or I had left the milk out, or the chips were on the couch and they were still open," Koecheler said.

With Koecheler's permission, "Good Morning America" set up surveillance cameras in her apartment for a week. The cameras caught Koecheler sleep eating one night (she now takes medication so her sleep eating is more under control) and showed a side of her that neither she nor boyfriend Ryan Kelly had ever seen before.

"I'd never feel anything 'cause I sleep like a rock," he said.

When Kocheler viewed the tape, she was very surprised by her behavior.

"I was like a zombie. What am I doing? Looks like M&Ms. I'm loud. How many handfuls did I take?" she said with a laugh. "I didn't think I ate Cheetos, did I? That's kind of scary that I didn't--"

Then she saw herself drinking lemonade.

"I don't remember drinking that lemonade at all," she said. "Watching the video, I don't remember anything."

But her mother remembers her behavior well.

"She's been a sleep eater since she was very little," said Amy's mother, Shirley Koecheler. "She woke up every night; she would go to the kitchen. About three in the morning, and she was on the couch, and she had chocolate chips in her mouth, down her neck, into her white hair and all over the couch. And so, three o'clock in the morning, I'm washing her hair.

Koecheler's sleep eating isn't as bad as it once was. Four years ago, before she left for college, Koecheler went to the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorder Center for a diagnosis and treatment.

"Amy does not have a primary eating disorder," said Dr. Carlos Schenck of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center. "She does not have any form of anorexia nervosa or bulimia or binge eating. Rather, her restless leg syndrome, we believe, has promoted the sleep eating problem."

Koecheler inherited her restless leg syndrome from her dad and her sleep eating from her mom.