Looking for people sleepwalking

I am looking to get in touch with people sleepwalking or affected by some parasomnia.

Most sleepwalker either don't know they sleepwalk or only have a vague understand of the extend of their sleepwalking. Which was my case until I started this longitudinal study of myself, in correlation with many contributing/mitigating factors.
With that study I got to understand a lot more of my sleep walking: how do I do it, what does it look like, what are the different levels of intensity/complexity of my sleepwalking and of course what affects it (or does not).
During this process I worked with many approaches on how to handle those data and how to extract meaningful information about it (scroll through the many sections of that blog to explore those data).

So now I would like to discuss this approach to other people sleepwalking. As I am sure every sleepwalker has it's own "style" of doing it. And maybe different factor contributing (or not) to it.

This is a different approach as the classic sleep clinic one where patients are interviewed about what triggers the sleepwalking (as a one time subjective correlation, not as a meticulously collected correlation from which subjectivity has been removed) and spend one or 2 nights in a sleep clinic (unfamiliar sleep environment likely to trigger a different behavior than normal).
The approach I focused on is based on thorough data collection  of both sleepwalking events at home and of daytime actions potentially affecting sleepwalking. The goal is to do it over a period of time long enough to get statistically relevant data, and thus being able to draw conclusive opinions.

If you are interested please contact me (howismysleep (at) gmail (dot) com) and I will be happy to further discuss the idea.

If you have some doubts go see a sleep specialist and ask him/her the following questions:
* Why do we sleepwalk?
* What triggers it? What are the study to support that?
* What drugs are effective? What are the study to support that?
You will be surprised that those questions are pretty much unanswered. Because there is no good data on why sleepwalking happens.

The amount of time staying awake after bedtime does not affect my sleepwalking

As part of my investigation of what factor impacts my sleepwalking, I looked at the effect of staying awake after bedtime. Is it beneficial to linger in bed before falling asleep, as a way to relax? Or could it have a negative impact by reducing the actual amount of time spending sleeping?

Staying awake after going to bed versus falling asleep almost immediately has no impact on my sleepwalking, as the scores below show.

Average values, +/- SEM. % variation and statistical significance are indicated (if less than 1%)

Data exclude nights with clonazepam and are normalized for the effect of coffee and tiredness.

Bedtime has no influence on my sleepwalking

As part of my investigation of what factor impacts my sleepwalking, I looked at the effect of different bedtime. This is a potentially important question for me as I have a relatively consistent waking up time. So any delay going to bed directly translate into a shorter night for example.

The time at which I go to bed (distinct from the time at which I fall asleep) does not correlate with any of my sleepwalking scores, as the graphs below show.

Average values, +/- SEM. % variation and statistical significance are indicated (if less than 1%)

Additionally, there is also no correlation between the time I went to bed the night before and my sleepwalking the following night, as shown in the graphs below.

Average values, +/- SEM. % variation and statistical significance are indicated (if less than 1%)

Data exclude nights with clonazepam and are normalized for the effect of coffee and tiredness.

Length of time asleep does not correlate with my sleepwalking

As part of my investigation of what factor impacts my sleepwalking, I looked at the effect of the amount of time spent asleep that night, and the night before.
For the night of I don't expect much of an impact, except maybe a decrease in the average time between events if those are evenly spread through the night.
The main question is to see if the amount of time asleep the night before has an impact on the following night. In other words will being partially sleep deprived or particularly well rested affect my sleepwalking?

The amount of time I spend asleep does not correlate with any of my sleepwalking scores for that night as the graphs below show.

Average values, +/- SEM. % variation and statistical significance are indicated (if less than 1%)

Interestingly there also no correlation between the length of my sleep the night before and my sleepwalking scores for the following night, as shown below (graphs G to L).

Average values, +/- SEM. % variation and statistical significance are indicated (if less than 1%)

Data exclude nights with clonazepam and are normalized for the effect of coffee and tiredness.

The quality of my sleep does not correlate to my sleepwalking

As part of my investigation of what factor impacts my sleepwalking, I looked at the effect of my sleep quality. This would not be a trigger for sleepwalking but more to see if it to correlates with my sleepwalking. Is my definition of a bad sleep due to a more intense sleepwalking night?

Unfortunately, the quality of my sleep is not an indicator of my sleepwalking activity, as the graphs below show.

Average values, +/- SEM. % variation and statistical significance are indicated (if less than 1%)

Sleep quality was defined by giving each night a score from 0 (best) to 3 (worst) in the following morning.
Data exclude nights with clonazepam and are normalized for the effect of coffee and tiredness.

Last updated: 24 Sept 2015