A news report from Stuff.co.nz examines the sleep disorder of sleep shopping.
The increasing reports of people firing up phones and laptops in their sleep don’t surprise the founder of the New Zealand-wide Sleep Well Clinic, Dr Alex Bartle. He can tell you far more jaw-dropping stories of people who eat or initiate sex in their sleep. “They’re all variants of sleepwalking” he says. “They are automatic behaviours.”
Known as parasomnias, they 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,” he says.
