A mother in Wisconsin almost choked to death after eating an entire box of chocolate cake rolls while sleepwalking.
Christian Owens, 41, started sleepwalking as a side effect of the postpartum anxiety medication she began taking after the birth of her then 15-month-old daughter.
However, soon after she started taking the prescription she found she was eating in her sleep and in 2018, while stuck in a dream state, Ms Owens unknowingly devoured a whole box of swiss rolls before heading back to bed.
But after not chewing them properly, a piece of the pastry ‘suffocated’ her. Ms Owens was just minutes from death when her grandmother, 84-year-old Elinda Owens, awoke four hours later and found Ms Owens in bed with blue lips.
She quickly began CPR to save her granddaughter’s life.
Ms Owens is one of the millions of Americans who suffer from sleep-related eating disorder (SRED), which involves preparing or eating food while sleeping but having no memory of it.
Doctors have dubbed it a ‘horrendous’ condition that ‘has the worst impact on people’s lives,’ as it leads to weight gain and severe mental distress.
Christian Owens, 41, unknowingly ate a whole box of chocolate swiss rolls in her sleep, causing her to nearly choke to death
Ms Owens’ grandmother, Elinda (left, with Ms Owens) saved her life by performing CPR for six minutes. Ms Owens had just minutes to live
Sleep-eating is a parasomnia, an abnormal or unusual behavior during sleep, like walking, talking, experiencing night terrors and engaging in sexual activity while asleep.
Ms Owens believes her SRED is a side effect of her postpartum anxiety medication. According to the Cleveland Clinic, drugs that put patients into a sleepy or hypnotic state, like insomnia medications, can trigger SRED and other parasomnias.
Several forms of anxiety medication have also been shown to increase drowsiness and put patients into a sleepy state.
‘The medication would make me sleepy, and I’d wake up in the middle of the night and I wouldn’t be aware that I was awake,’ Ms Owens said.
Though it wasn’t the first time she had found herself sleep eating, because she didn’t chew the food properly this time, the rolls traveled to her lungs instead of her stomach, a process called aspiration.
This causes trouble breathing, which could turn fatal if not caught in time.
‘It’s like it went down the wrong pipe. I basically suffocated, and it caused my heart to stop,’ Ms Owens said.
By the time Ms Owens’ grandmother found her, her lips had turned blue.
Elinda, a retired nurse, performed CPR for six minutes, breaking three of her granddaughter’s ribs in the process.
The mother-of-five only remembers waking up in the ICU, where she spent several days on a ventilator, which was breathing for her.
‘I had a little bit of brain damage to my short term memory, so it made it hard to remember things and memorize things, but other than that, I made a full recovery,’ she said.
Part of a sweet roll had traveled to Ms Owens’ lungs instead of her stomach, causing her to have trouble breathing
Ms Owens woke up in the hospital on a ventilator, completely unaware of what had happened
Cleveland Clinic estimates between one and five percent of American adults have some form of parasomnia. This is a range of roughly 2.5million to 13million people.
There is no exact estimate on how many people eat when they sleep.
Dr Carlos Schenck, a professor and senior staff psychiatrist at the Hennepin County Medical Center at the University of Minnesota, told CNN that of all parasomnias, ‘sleep-related eating disorder has the worst impact on people’s lives.’
‘These people have disinhibited eating almost every night. They gain weight. They feel miserable in the morning. It affects their whole life and is just horrendous.’
He noted when a person sleep eats, their brain craves foods that satisfy the body’s need for gratification, which includes ultra-processed foods like candy, cakes, and chips.
‘You don’t have any control, you don’t have any restraint,’ he said. ‘People can consume foods they’re allergic to and then have an allergic reaction. It’s rare, but it happens.
‘And because they choose foods like peanut butter, chocolate, leftover banana cream pie or pasta — fattening, overly processed comfort foods — they can develop or aggravate their diabetes or hypertension.’
The condition is typically treated by preventing access to food at night, such as with locks, managing stress, and practicing good ‘sleep hygiene.’ This means avoiding caffeine, screens, and alcohol before bed to promote restful sleep.
Six years later, Ms Owens hails her now 90-year-old ‘superhuman’ grandmother for saving her life.
‘It was all because of my grandmother,’ she said. ‘When they told me what happened, it was a big shock.
‘I was so incredibly grateful. My grandparents basically raised me, and my grandmother has always been my hero, but that took it to another level.’
