Death by sleepwalking a rare but real possibility, says expert

Chris Hyndman's death maybe attributed to sleepwalking and one expert says it's more common than you may think.

In an interview with The Toronto Star, Glenda Hyndman, mother of the late “Steven & Chris” star, revealed that she thinks her son died sleepwalking off his apartment terrace and plunging to his death before landing in a laneway at 68 Broadview Avenue in Toronto on Monday night. Though no official cause of death has been disclosed, his mother said her son struggled with sleepwalking for years.

“Christopher was a sleepwalker, and he did that a lot. He even ate in his sleep. He was caught by Steven many times eating in his sleep, absolutely … I don’t know if he ever got a restful, solid sleep.” she told the reporter.

According to Dr. Raymond Gottschalk, the medical director of the Sleep Disorders Clinic in Hamilton, Ont., it’s a cruel irony that the less sleep one gets, the deeper they sleepwalk, so it wouldn't have been uncommon for someone with the sleep habits of Hyndman to be a very active sleepwalker.

“If you don't get enough sleep, there's more of a tendency for your sleep to be fragmented and therefore you may sleepwalk more often and your loved ones may have a harder time waking you up,” says Gottschalk.

That's when sleepwalking can get dangerous. Injury is a common risk of sleepwalking, especially if you sleepwalk out of the house, but death by sleepwalking is very rare.

“Sleepwalking is very common, but death by sleepwalking isn't common at all. I couldn't give you a number because often it's very difficult to prove some of these things,” says Gottschalk.

The latest research shows one third of people experience some form of sleepwalking, and they share some abnormal neural activity when they do so.

Somewhere between waking and dreaming

Out of the 100 billion neurons in our brain, only two to three per cent of those neurons actually govern consciousness, so you can be unconscious while 97 to 98 per cent of your brain is still doing what it wants to do, which is how people can walk or do any number of things while sleeping.

“The brain doesn't shut down in unity. It shuts down in sequence,” says Gottschalk.

“When you go to sleep you think you're going offline, but for some of these people, for whatever reason, that circuitry in the brain doesn't shut down completely. The unconsciousness stays because they're not conscious of what they're doing, but the other portions of their brain have woken up.”

All of us have experienced some part of this when we fall asleep while watching TV. You may be asleep, but you may still hear the TV in the background while others tell you that you were snoring. You may insist you were awake when you were actually asleep, and sleepwalking exists in that same grey area between waking and dreaming.

All in the family

According to varying studies, the prevalence of sleepwalking can be as low as one per cent or as high as 15 per cent depending on the family. After all, five to ten per cent of kids, maybe even 15 per cent, sleepwalk and if one parent sleepwalks then it will likely be passed down to half their offspring.

“Sleepwalking runs in families,” says Gottschalk. “You can actually train a kid to sleepwalk because children sleep much more deeply than us, so you can actually get them up a few hours after bedtime and you can trot them off to the toilet and they’re not awake or aware of what's going on.”

It's proof that the brain can do different things and consciousness doesn't need to be involved, but the brain's capacity for unconscious activity goes way beyond just training kids to go to the bathroom while they're sleeping.

The dangers of sleepwalking

Sleepwalking really only scratches the surface of possible sleep activities. Beyond that there's sleep-driving, sleep-eating, sleep-writing, sleep-sex and the latest one, sleep-texting. In Canada, there was even a case of sleep-homicide. In 1992, Ken Parks was acquitted by the Supreme Court after it was determined by doctor testimony that he killed his in-laws while sleepwalking and had no knowledge of what he was doing.

“All of these variations have the potential to cause harm to yourself or others, even sleep-texting can have you writing things to people you care about that you never meant to send or say,” says Gottschalk.

The reason something like sleep-texting is even possible comes down to the fact that texting is something a person does so often, that it has become a pervasive, routine pattern of behaviour that they often do when they're awake.

“In the case of any of these activities, you wouldn't expect something miraculous. They would recreate something that they'd done before. Anyone who’s played a musical instrument knows that if you learn something the wrong way, to unlearn it is extremely difficult.”

Many of the people doing seemingly complex tasks in their sleep report either having zero recollection or memory of what went on or they report having only vague recollections of what had happened where they can't quite remember it, but they know something had happened.

Many of these activities may seem innocuous or funny and if you live in a basement they might be, but if you live on the fifth floor, Gottschalk recommends locking cupboards and windows before bed or putting a little bell or alarm on the door that will alert the person and their families that they've left the house while sleepwalking. This way, it reduces the chances of people getting seriously hurt or dying.

“You have to ensure their doors will waken them if they go out inadvertently. You don't want to lock the door because if there's a fire, they're stuck. We also tell them to hide their keys in a place where they wouldn't just go and find them and go off and drive in an impaired state,” he says.

How to treat sleepwalking

Prior to his death, in an earlier interview with The Toronto Star, Hyndman revealed that he was taking medication to help him sleep.

“I love anything to make me sleep," he said of his medicine and sleep aid collection. "I'm obsessed with scented candles ... I have soothing, deep-breathing CDs, earplugs, natural Gravol, Tylenol PM, and NyQuil every now and then."

Unfortunately, if he was taking any sleep medications like Ambien, Gottschalk says he would've made his sleepwalking worse.

“Sleep medications like Ambien depress your consciousness even deeper and make it much harder for you to wake up.”

Instead, Gottschalk recommends just getting enough sleep and removing distractions such as pets from your bed. In addition to any medications he was taking, Gottschalk also says there could've been many factors that contributed to Hyndman's sleepwalking struggle.

“Had they just recently been on a trip, had he been jet-lagged, had he been sleep depriving, had he taken some cough medication or sedative?” he asks.

The stress of having his own show along with the cough medications he had in his medicine cabinet could've been significant factors, but Gottschalk says you only really need to go to see a specialist about sleepwalking if you are older and it comes to you out of the blue.

“If the behaviour is abnormal and you notice things out of place, then get your primary physician to refer you to us,” Gottschalk says. “Sleepwalking like this could also be a sign of seizures or epilepsy.”

If you think you might be struggling with sleepwalking, ask your family doctor for a referral to a sleep disorders clinic in your area.