Scientists found that approximately one in 12 people had confessed that they are engaging or doing some kind of sexual activity while they slept. They found also that from all these people three-quarters of the self-reported "sexsomniacs" are men.

Experts declared such sexual behaviour that occurred while sleeping can range from masturbation through to sexual intercourse. Researchers from the Sleep Research Laboratory at the University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto observed that the sleep disorder was more common in our days than previously thought.

In their study researchers enrolled 832 patients who they supposed of suffering from some kind of sleep disorder like sexsomnia.

The 428 men and 404 women completed questionnaires about their symptoms, about their fatigue, mood and even about their behavior during sleep. At the end of the investigation researchers found that more than one in 10 male and four percent of female confessed that they had engaged in "sleep sex".

Dr. Sharon Chung, a scientist from the UHN, argued that people who suffer from it usually do not remember about being engaged in such activity.

"We were very surprised at how common it was. We considered that we would get only few people, yet it was approximately one in 12 participants," reported Dr. Chung.

For the first time Mrs. Chung decided to study this sleep disorder – sexsomnia. And he was very surprised when found that eight percent of people reporting sexsomnia seems really a high number. She argued also that they only studied patients from a sleep clinic.

She added: "Is it a problem? As long as you do not get into legal problems and as long as your partner doesn't mind, it is not a serious problem."

However sexsomnia has only one negative result, because people with such disorders are tired the next day.

This new phenomenon is a form of parasomnia, or unwanted behavior during sleep. Sexsomnia can also happen during sleepwalking, according to the International Classification of Sleep Disorders.

Dr. Chung added also that insomnia, fatigue and depressed moods were common symptoms of people reporting sexsomnia.