MINNEAPOLIS, May 6, 2008—Scientists don't know why some people get out of bed to eat, walk, make phone calls or even drive their cars while still sound asleep.

But Mark Mahowald, M.D., medical director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Minneapolis, was one of two Minnesota physicians quoted in a Wall Street Journal article about these strange behaviors.

The root of the problem is that people are doing strange things and then not remembering that they did them. Events are not being stored in the brain's memory. "It's like a self-erasing tape," Mahowald told the reporter.

Mahowald, a member of the MMA, noted in the article that some people engage in weird sleep behaviors even when they aren't on a sleep drug. "One common form is for a man to get up to go to the bathroom in his sleep and only make it to the closet. But people seldom report that," he said, adding that such behavior is more common on sleeping medication than off. 

Sleep medications are flying over the counter, the article said, in the face of Food and Drug Administration warnings last year that Ambien, Lunesta and similar "sedative-hypnotic" drugs were having strange effects on people.

Sleep-aid prescriptions in the U.S. grew 10 percent last year, according to IMS Health, thanks largely to generic Ambien.

A new study from the World Health Organization suggests that some side effects of the new sleep drugs may be almost as bad as older generation drugs like Halcyon.

Carlos Schenck, M.D., a psychiatrist who works with Mahowald and likewise a member of the MMA, told the Journal about 40 cases of Sleep-Related Eating Disorder (SRED). Some patients cut themselves with knives, consume inedibles like buttered cigarettes and wake up gasping for air with their mouths full of peanut butter -- a favorite of people who eat while sound asleep.

Wall Street Journal link