Drunk texting and sleep walking … sure, we’ve heard of those. But what about SLEEP texting?
A paramedic in the Quad Cities tells WQAD that if you text her while she’s sleeping, chances are she’ll respond. But when she wakes up? She won’t remember a thing.
“Nine times out of 10, I have no idea I'd texted in the middle of the night or I responded to a text," says Kandi Gay.
"We've known she's done it for a couple years," says her father Wayne Gay. "She'll go to sleep and then I'll come in and see her texting, [her phone] up in the air with her eyes closed -- she'll be texting and lay it down, and she won't know what she's doing."
Wow -- what a sight that must be!
Dr. Russell Rosenberg, director of the Atlanta School of Sleep Medicine and Technology, guesses that she must be suffering from a variant of sleep talking or sleep walking -- a group of sleep disorders called parasomnias.
“The brain gets stuck in between half-awake and half-asleep,” he tells HLN. It’s like the switch that takes you from being awake to being asleep isn’t fully switched over.
But wait, there's more: I sent what?? Sleep texting on the rise
He says episodes of walking, talking, texting, etc. usually occur earlier in the evening and most people have no memory of it when they wake up.
He estimates that about 1% of adults sleepwalk, but there are no good numbers out there. Patients suffering from a parasomnia can do a whole spectrum of things while sleeping, including harming themselves or others. So many of the more benign episodes like sleep talking or texting aren’t reported.
If it only happens on occasion, Rosenberg says it could be related to stress. But if it’s a regular occurrence? “Prevention is the best medicine,” he says. Meaning, lock up that cell phone!
Kandi tells WQAD she’s planning to deal with it for now. Her relatives have even found a silver lining.
"A lot of our friends and family know about this," Wayne Gay tells WQAD, "so they know if you can't get a hold of us, you can get a hold of Kandi night or day!"
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