(Coaster)
"Sexsomniacs" puzzle medical researchers
to understand a rare medical condition where sufferers
unknowingly demand, or actually have, sex while asleep, New
Scientist magazine reported on Wednesday.
Research into sexsomnia -- making sexual advances toward
another person while asleep -- has been hampered as sufferers
are so embarrassed by the problem they tend not to own up to
it, while doctors do not ask about it.
As yet there is no cure for the condition, which often
leads to difficulties in relationships.
"It really bothers me that I can't control it," Lisa
Mahoney told the magazine. "It scares me because I don't think
it has anything to do with the partner. I don't want this
foolish condition to hurt us in the long run."
Most researchers view sexsomnia as a variant of
sleepwalking, where sufferers are stuck between sleep and
wakefulness, though sexsomniacs tend to stay in bed rather than
get up and walk about.While sleepwalking affects two to four percent of adults,
sexsomnia is not thought to be as common a problem, according
to Nik Trajanovic, a researcher at the sleep and alertness
clinic at Canada's Toronto Western Hospital.
But an Internet survey of sexsomniacs carried out in 2005
that drew 219 reliable respondents concluded it was more
prevalent than medical case reports alone might suggest.
"Most of the time sleep sex occurs between people who are
already partners," Mark Pressman, a sleep specialist at
Lankenan Hospital in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, told the New
Scientist.
"Sometimes they hate it," added Pressman of the reactions
of sexsomniacs' partners. "Sometimes they tolerate it. On rare
occasions you have stories of people liking it better than
waking sex."
With no cure, addressing triggering factors -- stress or
sleep deprivation -- can help, while Michael Mangan, a
psychologist at the University of New Hampshire in the U.S. has
set up a Web site,
www.sleepsex.org, to help sufferers.
Meanwhile Trajanovic is devising a procedure for diagnosing
sexsomnia in legal cases where sufferers have been accused of
sexual assault.
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