Stress leads to a rise in 'sleep texting'

The stress of daily life and the inability to turn off at night is leading to a new phenomenon of texting friends and family whilst asleep

If you sleep with your mobile phone under your pillow you could be in danger of sending incoherent texts to friends and family while you are dreaming.

Experts claim that people with the rare condition send incoherent text messages while they are asleep, completely unaware that they are doing it.

'We have had patients who have reported sending text messages to their friends and family while asleep,' he says. 'It is one of those things that happens, but it is very rare, and certainly not a common trend,' says sleep specialist Dr David Cunnington, of the Melbourne Sleep Disorder Centre in Australia.

Dr Cunnington believes sleep texting is the result of the busy lives we lead and people having too much to do during the waking day.

'Because it's so easy to receive emails constantly, and get notifications from smartphones, it becomes more difficult for us to separate our waking and sleep lives.'

Dr Cunnington says sleeping with your phone on the bedside table makes it more difficult to get a good night's sleep without feeling obliged to reply to an email or check your Facebook account.

'The key point is that people need to respect their sleep and make an effort to switch off at night.'

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