Study Finds Sleep Drunkenness May Affect More Than 1 in 7 People

Study Finds Sleep Drunkenness May Affect More Than 1 in 7 People
Do you get enough sleep?

January 5
Ever heard of "sleep drunkenness"? Have you ever tried to reach for your phone when your alarm clock rings? Or when you wake up you don't know where you are? Then you may have experienced what's known formally as "confusional arousal."
More than 1 in 7 people in the U.S. may suffer from the condition, according to a study in the journal Neurology. In confusional arousal, sleepers wake up in a disoriented state and perhaps behave strangely in the process. The condition often occurs when someone wakes up during  non-REM sleep and can be caused by a "forced awakening" the study authors wrote. It can potentially cause violent behavior during sleep or right as the person wakes up.
To find out how  prevalent sleep drunkenness is, the researchers surveyed 19,136 people age 18 or older in 15 states. They found that 15.2 percent of respondents said they had experienced a confusional arousal  episode in the previous year. The episodes were overwhelmingly linked to sleep disorders, which were present 70.8 percent of the time.

January 6
The majority of those who'd experienced confusional arousal were experiencing it regularly. 53.8 percent reported having at least one episode per week, and 24.7 percent reported two to five episodes per month.
For 37.6 percent of sufferers, the episodes were brief ─ less than 5 minutes. But 30.1 percent of them said the episodes could last 15 minutes or more after waking up.
Many shared similar  symptoms. 57 percent reported being disoriented as they woke up, and 34.4 percent said they had difficulty talking or thinking clearly. In addition, 19.9 percent said they experienced "inappropriate behaviors" such as grabbing the phone instead of  flailing for the alarm clock. Confusional arousal isn't officially classified as a disorder, the researchers pointed out, "probably because it has received little attention from the scientific community."
But if it was, they said, it could raise awareness. And that could lead to a better understanding of the condition and better treatment options.
"Our study shows that  underestimating the importance of CA leads to a misunderstanding of the disorder and its effects," the study authors wrote.