(Image source from: Do you sleep-text too?})

Don't recall sending that message? Then beware, you could be sleep-texting!

Around thirty percent of the world's population has trouble  getting a good night sleep. The number is even more staggering when it comes to sleep deprivation. What's worse is that among the smaller percentage of people who do get their good eight hours of snooze at night, there is a growing percentage of urbanites who engage in “sleep-texting”, a rising mania that can interfere with the quality and quantity of your sleep. Stunned! Read on.

Sleep-disorder is an alarming trend.

"Four o'clock in the morning, 3 o'clock in the morning -- it would just be a sentence of jumbled-up stuff," a sleep-texter said. "I guess I got up and texted, and went back to bed, but I don't remember it."

Of course, sleep-texting can cause some embarrassing situations. Elizabeth Dowdell, a professor of nursing at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, has investigated the phenomenon of sleep-texting among college students.

One young woman Dowdell studied had a habit of sending gushing, romantic texts to platonic friends. "A classmate texted her something about anatomy class, and her reply back was, 'I just love it. I love you! You're the light of my life,'" Dowdell told US News & World Report. "Then, there was an old boyfriend who texted her, and she sent responses like, 'I adore you, please come over,' while she was asleep. She was mortified when she realized."

Not just that, sleep-texting may trigger healthproblems as well like obesity, heart disease, depression, high blood pressure, immune-system dysfunction and other issues.

"Sleep is a very important restorative process," Dr. Josh Werber, a sleep and snoring specialist, told US News. "And when we're not fully engaged in it, and not getting the amount we need, we're not having the same restorative effect on our brains -- and that affects our cognitive ability the next day."

AW: Suchorita Dutta