The Herald Sun is reporting that the bizarre new phenomenon was discovered by Dr. David Cunnington of the Melbourne Sleep Disorder Center in Australia who has begun to treat patients who send text messages in their sleep. The messages are usually incoherent and sent to friends and family during the night while the sender is completely unaware of what they are doing.
"It is one of those things that happens, but it is very rare, and certainly not a common trend," said Dr. Cunningham.
Thus far, there are no studies on sleep texting, but a similar phenomenon, sleep emailing, was studied in 2008 by researchers from Seton Hall University. Their study documented the case of a 44 year-old woman with severe insomnia who was being treated with the popular prescription drug, Ambien, when she began to send e-mails to friends while sleep walking in the middle of the night.
Dr. Fouzia Siddiqui, lead author of the study and a neurologist at the University of Toledo, said at the time that this particular sleepwalking case was unique because of the amount of complex actions the woman had to take in order to compose these e-mails.
"Sleepwalking has occurred in the past where people will [conduct] other activities such as cooking or moving furniture around," Siddiqui said. "But this case is unique in that she wasn't just sleepwalking but doing things like turning on her computer, remembering her user name and password and typing entire e-mails."
As strange as it sounds, Dr Cunnington said cases of sleep emailing are actually more common and were likely to have a more detrimental effect on the lives of sufferers.
"Emails can be sent to work colleagues and have much more serious consequences, whereas text messages are more likely to be accidentally sent to a friend or family member, so people aren't as likely to complain of a problem," he said.
The latest phenomenon, sleep texting, could be the result of having too much to do during waking life.
"People are doing so much during a normal day that it can mean that they feel like they're 'on call' even at night," he said.
"Because it's so easy to receive emails constantly, and get notifications from smart phones, it becomes more difficult for us to separate our waking and sleeping lives."
Sleepwalking, known as parasomnia, affects five to 10 percent of the population, which means sleep texting may not be so uncommon in years to come.
To avoid it, Dr Cunnington suggests that people leave their cell phones out of the bedroom at night.
"If your phone is on the nightstand, then it will be more difficult to have a good night's sleep without feeling compelled to reply to a message or check your Facebook account," he said.
"The key point is that people need to respect their sleep, and make an effort to switch off at night."
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