Expert review of endocrinology & metabolismSep 20, 2019

Night Eating Syndrome: Mental Health, Sleep Problems, Body Clock, or Metabolism?

Circadian Biology Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Updated Apr 3, 2026

Abstract

Night Eating Syndrome (NES) involves evening overeating with more than 25% of total calorie intake occurring at night and nocturnal awakenings with food ingestion at least twice weekly.

Treatment options for NES are currently limited to case studies without promising long-term efficacy data.
Knowledge regarding the etiology and diagnosis of NES is still in its early stages.
The lack of evidence for NES may result from clinician unawareness, patient under-reporting, and unclear diagnostic criteria.
Objective symptom screening during medical visits could help identify more patients at high risk for NES.

Simplified

: Night Eating Syndrome (NES) refers to an abnormal eating behavior which presents as evening hyperphagia consuming >25% calorie intake and/or nocturnal awaking with food ingestion which occurs ≥2 times per week. Although the syndrome has been described more than seven decades ago, the literature has been growing slowly on its etiology, diagnosis, and treatment.: The proposed treatment options for NES are all at a case-study level. Moreover, our understanding of its etiology, comorbidities, and diagnosis is still premature. We performed a literature review in Medline/PubMed to identify all the studies proposing a management plan for NES and summarized all the existing data on its diagnosis and treatment.: To date, none of the proposed treatment options for NES have been promising and long-term data on its efficacy is lacking. The slow growth of evidence on this debilitating but underreported condition may be due to unawareness among clinicians, under-reporting by patients, and unrecognized diagnostic criteria. Objective screening of symptoms during office visits especially for patients at a high-risk for NES will identify more patients suffering from the syndrome. Introduction Areas covered Expert opinion

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Night Eating Syndrome: Mental Health, Sleep Problems, Body Clock, or Metabolism?

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