(ABCNEWS.com)
At first, she didn't even know that she was doing it.
Every morning, "I would wake up and it felt like I hadn't gone to bed," she said.
She had no idea why she was waking up exhausted or why she was unable to keep her eyes open during the day. When her doctor recommended that Ryan participate in a sleep study, she thought it was unnecessary. But the results of the study surprised her. It turns out Ryan was up most nights and she was eating in her sleep.
Like most sleep-eaters, Ryan had no recollection of her nightly trips to the kitchen. But she wanted to see it for herself. She invited "Primetime" to set up night-vision cameras in her home to record her nocturnal journeys.
To her amazement, the cameras captured five different trips to the kitchen in a two-night period. The footage revealed Ryan, with a vacant stare, wandering into the kitchen and ransacking the cabinets. Ryan was eating, then filling her arms with snacks and taking them back to her bed.
Ryan's doctor, Scott Eveloff, said her nighttime gorging demonstrated an almost textbook case of sleep-eating.
"If you'll notice on the video, Anna does pass by the fruit, passes by several other more nutritious foods and then not only takes the non-nutritious food but, unfortunately, takes a lot of it and eats an almost a slovenly manner," Eveloff said. "That is classic sleep eating behavior."
Watching the video of herself sleep-eating for the first time, she was shocked by the images.
"I wonder why I don't choke. Wow! I didn't realize I was in bed eating and then laying down and eating," she said. "It's scarier than I thought, actually."
According to Dr. Carlos Schenck, author of "Sleep: the Mysteries, the Problems and the Solutions," that sort of shock is common with patients often wondering how they could be asleep and eating at the same time. When they see video of themselves, he said they tell him "it's disgusting, it's gross, it's terrible!"
Do you have more information about this topic? If so, please click here to contact the editors of ABC News.
