Although more common in children, parasomnias can occur at any age.
A rare disorder has caused a woman in England to spend more than 3,000 pounds (Rs 3.2 lakh) on shopping while sleeping. According to the New York Post, 42-year-old Kelly Knipes confessed that she shops in her sleep because of a rare sleeping disorder called parasomnia.
”It’s really upsetting and frustrating going to bed thinking, ‘I don’t know what the night is going to lead to,” Ms Knipes revealed to South West News Service.
Prone to late-night shopping sprees, Ms Knipes has ended up purchasing unusual items such as a full-sized plastic basketball court including a net, pole and backboard. She’s even ordered tins of paint, books, salt and pepper pots, a children’s playhouse, fridges, tables and hundreds of Haribo candies. She couldn’t return the food items and decided to keep the paint tins after her kids saw them.
”I was racking up debt everywhere. I would never actually have to put any credit card details when I was buying things online because it was all saved on my phone,” she admitted.
However, her condition took a worrying turn after she revealed her personal financial information to scammers. ”I gave them all my details, then when I woke up, they had taken $317 out [of] my bank account. I wouldn’t have replied to it if I was awake,” she said.
Ms Knipes believes that her personal information was sold by the scammers as attempts have been made to withdraw money from her account. Thankfully, her bank has been able to block several transactions, but she suffers from the consequences of this disorder.
She now wears a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device to keep the airway open at night. Though it has helped her a little, the device locks her jaw while sleeping, so she unknowingly keeps removing the machine from her face.
”A person with parasomnias may seem to be alert, walking or talking, or eating or doing other such activities but without awareness, because the brain is only partially awake,” according to Yale Medicine.
Known as parasomnias, such people spark into action in the three to four hours after nodding off. ”They tend to happen in the first part of the night when you’re in your non-REM sleep. When you’re in REM sleep at the end of the night you’re paralysed, so you’re not going to be able to do all these things,” founder of the New Zealand-wide Sleep Well Clinic, Dr Alex Bartle said.
Although more common in children, parasomnias can occur at any age.