Talk:Night eating syndrome

Who

Who recognizes that "NES" is an eating disorder?

"Night eating syndrome is an eating disorder[1] that has only been recognized as such since 1999, and affects between 1 and 2% of the population.[2] NES is also characterized as a sleeping disorder.[3]" 02:08, 11 March 2007 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.150.62.191 (talk) 02:08, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I am unsure of what your concern is. --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 02:14, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Treatment section currently contravenes NPOV policy.

The current Treatment section definitely doesn't adhere to WP's NPOV policy. Unless someone can come up with some NPOV, properly referenced material fairly soon, I think the section should be deleted. I'll give the article a look-over in a week or so to see if the situation's improved at all. Kay Dekker (talk) 00:25, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

 Fixed -- OlEnglish ^(Talk) 08:12, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you! The only thing I could ask for is citations for the second paragraph and most particularly for the third. Kay Dekker (talk) 17:13, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Night eating syndrome and Asperger's

Could NES be a symptom of Asperger's syndrome as people who suffer from AS tend to be more active at night than during the day. --194.81.33.7 (talk) 17:40, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Edit

More balanced introduction regarding NES' status as a disorder. Removed redundant content and content that confused NES with nocturnal sleep related eating disorder (this confusion was mentioned sentences earlier in the same article!). Removed unverifiable statements and unsourced material that appeared to be original research. References are PubMed IDs because I couldn't manage to find URLs that directed to the abstracts - go to www.pubmed.com and input the number in the search field and voila. 58.160.154.127 (talk) 08:14, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Edits concerning specificity

I noticed that the article did not mention that the age of onset is actually early adulthood (anywhere from late teens to late twenties) rather than just adulthood, and also that the syndrome is often times long-lasting. I got the information from Jillon S. Vander Wal's journal article Night eating syndrome: A critical review of the literature. I believe this specificity is important in explaining the social culture of the disorder, showing that the typical onset is in a younger stage of adulthood. Also, I believe it is important in clarifying it's resiliency in order to truly capture the seriousness and legitimacy of the illness. By the way, I have not made the edits yet because I wanted to review it with you fellow editors and I am also very new to the editing process. Thanks! Thesawman44 (talk) 03:12, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

(Many years later... a retired expert opinion)

I was at a talk given by Albert "Mickey" Stunkard about NES at a research conference on eating behavior in 1999, and at that time all he presented in support of the syndrome were correlations and a vague definition (>50% of calories consumed after 6:00 PM), which differs from that in this article. At the time I thought he was describing a new area of research he had been moving into and the pilot data he had collected, not reviewing an idea that was already 44 years old (now 68 yrs). (I was an obesity researcher at the time, and I knew him for his work concerning the socioeconomic consequences of society's treatment of obese people - groundbreaking work, and heartbreaking to read. I think every nutrition student learns about Sobol and Stunkard.) I never got the impression then or now, after reading this short article, that there was any consensus that this was an actual disorder or a set of behaviors that are common in people with other disorders, or even a variation of normal behavior.

NES is a syndrome, which means a set of signs, symptoms, or characteristics that occur together, nothing more. A syndrome by itself is not a disorder (or an illness), though it can describe the set of signs and symptoms that define an underlying disorder. (E.g., Down syndrome is the syndrome caused by the chromosomal disorder trisomy 21, though in common usage the terms are synonyms.) As far as I understand, there is no disorder or disease that explains the statistical grouping of symptoms in NES. A statistical correlation might mean nothing, or it might mean the subjects who have been studied and determined to have NES had some factor in common that the studies didn't uncover, such as social or occupational influences (crappy food at the factory cafeteria puts people off eating lunch, maybe their shift starts so early they just don't have time for breakfast), caffeine or other stimulant intake (I expect someone must have studied this by now, though Mickey said nothing about it in 1999), recreational preferences, even proximity to favored restaurants. Or it might be the result of some as yet unidentified disorder.

I fit this pattern, probably to an extreme. I rarely eat anything all day until 2-3 hours before bedtime. The idea of eating early in the day feels very uncomfortable. I don't like forcing myself to eat when my body feels like it really can't deal with food at the time. I'm saying this to disclose to you that I am a very interested party in this discussion, and I would very much like these questions answered, but we can no longer define disorders as statistical deviance from the norm. I want answers that mean something. I don't want to be scared that I have a serious illness when no illness has been found, only an eating pattern that some of us seem to prefer and higher incidences of health problems among those of us who eat that way. I don't see any cause/effect relationship, and it appears no one has found one. Dcs002 (talk) 00:51, 23 September 2023 (UTC)