New Delhi, March 3: People with excessive daytime sleepiness are more likely to display irresistible craving for food and indulge in binge eating, a new study has indicated.

Medical researchers in The Netherlands have found that eating disorders are more common among patients with narcolepsy — a condition marked by an uncontrollable urge to sleep even during daytime — than in people with normal sleep patterns.

Their findings, reported this week in the journal Sleep from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, suggest that narcolepsy is not just a sleep disorder but a problem involving a region of the brain called hypothalamus and has other symptoms.

Scientists have known for nearly eight years that patients with narcolepsy have lower levels of a substance in the brain called hypocretin, a chemical that regulates sleep patterns.

“Our study suggests that the loss of hypocretin makes narcolepsy patients not only struggle with staying awake, but also destabilises their eating patterns,” said Hal Droogleever Fortuyn, a member of the study team at the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre.

The researchers found that among 60 patients with narcolepsy, nearly one in four had a clinical eating disorder, and one in two reported persistent craving for food. In contrast, none of the 120 people with normal sleep patterns had eating disorders.