Lying awake, unable to move or speak. Struggling to breathe while a dark figure is inching its way closer and closer. Helpless, the body is in complete paralysis. These are the most common experiences that come with sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is when a person is unable to move or speak immediately after waking up. It occurs when someone wakes up before REM sleep--a phase of rapid eye movement--is complete. Chemicals released during REM paralyze the muscles in the body, keeping it from physically acting out the movements of dreams. As a result of waking while these chemicals are still being released, the body is paralyzed. While only a small percent of the population is diagnosed with sleep paralysis, many people experience it at some …show more content…
However, it can branch off into other harmful disorders. A website containing information about sleep disorders and advice on how to get a better night sleep says, “Even though sleep paralysis itself is harmless, it can cause problems by creating bedtime anxiety and making one fearful of falling asleep, which can exacerbate pre-existing depression, anxiety, or sleep disorders” ("Are Sleep Paralysis and Hypnopompic Hallucinations Dangerous?"). Sleep paralysis can cause people to be anxious and fear falling asleep which can increase stress and anxiety levels.
While not life threatening, sleep paralysis can potentially trigger issues such as fear of sleeping, which in turn can lead to many sleep-related disorders. Sleep disorders are some of the most common health problems people suffer from but are also the most frequently looked over disorders. One of the most common sleep disorders is insomnia, which is the inability to fall asleep or the inability to stay asleep. Nearly ⅓ of the population suffers from insomnia. This can spiral into disorders and sleeping habits much worse than the original sleep paralysis and can have a negative impact on a person's everyday
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This interferes with REM, causing someone to wake up before REM has finished. People with PTSD have an increased risk of getting sleep paralysis. Researchers, Hinton, Pich, Chhean, Pollack and McNally explained, “Those who had been given a clinical diagnosis of PTSD showed higher sleep paralysis prevalences than those who had not been given a diagnosis” ("Sleep Paralysis Project | Risk Factors"). This study showed that 65% of the group diagnosed with PTSD suffered from sleep paralysis at least once while only 15% of group who had not been diagnosed did.
Sleep paralysis, while it is not considered to be dangerous, can have many long term effects. The constant loss of sleep is also associated with a wide range of disorders including: diabetes, obesity, depression, heart attack, and stroke. Many researchers say sleep paralysis is technically harmless but the aftereffects are far from it. Sleep paralysis can lead to sleep and panic disorders and increased
Imagine you are in a boring lecture and you start to drift to sleep, usually you can manage to force yourself to wake up. This may be common occurrence but try to imagine falling asleep while driving or walking. These situations seem more rare. A narcoleptic’s body doesn’t care what it is doing when it goes into these paralyzed sleeping episodes. The sudden overwhelming feeling drives the narcoleptic person to fall asleep. One type of episode that they experience is called cataplexy, which is usually caused by some stressful situation or other common activities such as laughing or running (6). During these periods the person suffers from muscle weakness and paralysis. Although the person appears to be sleeping, they are still conscious, but unable to move. They can hear and feel but cannot react to stimulation. For this reason narcolepsy is a very dangerous condition to have without receiving treatment because serious vehicle accidents can result as well as an general inability to succeed in school (6).
Insomnia can be linked to depression, heart failure, dramatic life events, and other medical issues. Curing these problems will help you get a better nights rest. It is really rare for someone to have insomnia and no other medical conditions. If this is the case, then curing or helping insomnia is far harder, although relaxation treatments may help.
Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder that inhibits a person's ability to function normally in society. Narcolepsy causes a person to fall asleep, almost spontaneously, regardless of the situation they are in. The sufferer could be at school, work, or a grocery store, and suddenly experience an intense haze of drowsiness. Suddenly the sensation overcomes the narcoleptic, and they fall victim to sleep. Usually this sleep state lasts for only a few moments, with the narcoleptic waking almost as quickly as they had fallen asleep. In other instances, the sleep state lasts for minutes; the narcoleptic waking up is not aware they had fallen asleep, they may also become frightened, or confused about events that happened prior to their "sleep attack." About 200,000 people in the United States have narcolepsy, making it a serious mental illness (narcolepsynetwork.org). Despite the number of people who have this disorder, however, only a small amount of information is available on narcolepsy. Narcolepsy is a fascinating disease that is looked over by society, if narcolepsy awareness becomes more wide-spread, then people will have a reason to pay attention to how serious this sleep-disorder really is.
As stated in the text book, hallucination during Sleep Paralysis also occurs due to the sudden high blood pressure in the human brain and the change in the membrane potential of the neurons in the visual and/or auditory cortex. What this means is that one person starts to feel fear or terror when under the state of paralysis, it causes the blood pressure in the brain to increase. The emotion of fear is stated to be perceived in a structure called amygdala in the brain. The amygdala tends to be a small structure which is deep inside the brain and has several distinct nuclei which are the following: medial, lateral, basal, and central. According to the article “Sleep paralysis episode frequency and number, types, and structure of associated hallucinations”, the lateral nucleus seems to receive input from thalamus and cortical sensory and association areas. Then after this happens, the basolateral nucleus integrate the input as fear and send the information to the central nucleus, from which a major output transmits through projections to the hypothalamus and brainstem autonomic areas.
Narcolepsy is a sleeping abnormality in which a person experiences sudden attacks of sleepiness during the day. Narcolepsy is an often-inherited neurological sleep disorder caused by the brains inability to regulate a stable sleep-wake cycle. (Turkington & Harris). People who suffer from this abnormality usually experience attacks of muscle weakness or paralysis and occasional dreamlike experiences while awake. Narcolepsy is a disturbance of the portion of sleep called rapid eye movement (REM) sleep into the waking period. During normal REM sleep, the muscles become deeply relaxed and the nerves to the muscles are basically paralyzed. The normal sleep period begins with about 90 minutes of non-REM sleep before REM sleep begins. But for a person
Mental health conditions can also cause chronic, long-term insomnia. Some examples of mental health conditions that can cause insomnia include general anxiety disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.
The discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep suggested that sleep was not, as it was thought to be, a dormant state but rather a mentally dynamic one. Your brain is, in fact, very active in this state, almost to the level at which it is when a person is awake. Yet during this active stage in which most dreams occur, the movements of the rest of the body are completely stilled. To imagine this paralysis during dreams not occurring is a frightful image, since in many cases dreams are violent and active. When the neurotransmitters that control the movement of the body do not work properly the person develops REM sleep behavioral disorder (RBD).
According to the history, Sleep Paralysis was classified as nightmare, a term that evolved into our modern definition by Samuel Johnson. It was widely considered to be the work of the demons, which were thought to sit on the chest of the sleeper. Various forms of magic and spiritual possession were also advanced as causes. But Sleep Paralysis can occur in the state between REM sleep, where dreaming occurs, and waking up. During REM sleep, the brain paralyses the body in order to keep us away from carrying out our dream-actions that could harm ourselves somehow. At times, our brain does not put off these dreams or the paralysis that comes along with them, resulting in a potentially terrifying experience. Sleep paralysis had been linked to disorders such as migraines, anxiety disorders, and obstructive sleep apnea. But when linked to another disorder, sleep paralysis commonly occurs together with the neurological sleep disorder called Narcolepsy. David McCarty, a sleep researcher at Louisiana State Health University, explained that in sleep paralysis, two of the key REM sleep components are presen...
There are also risks involved with not getting enough sleep. Most people will be very sleepy and drowsy during the day, mood and behavioral problems. and even increased vulnerability to drugs and alcohol. These things could also develop into more serious sleep disorders.
Arousal disorders are the most common type of parasomnia. These disorders include: confusional arousals, sleepwalking, sleep terrors and nightmares. Experts believe that each is related and share some symptoms. Essentially, they occur because a person is in a mixed state of being both asleep and awake, generally coming from the deepest stage of non-dreaming sleep. The individual is awake enough to act out complex behaviors, but asleep enough not to be aware of or remember them.
The phenomenon of sleep paralysis can be a frightening experience: many who suffer can feel tremendous anxiety and fear, even though occurrences are considered as harmless as a bad dream. The disorder does not discriminate on the basis of race or gender, but age sometimes is a factor. Treatment for sleep paralysis is limited; in general, doctors treat the disorders linked to sleep paralysis such as sleep apnea or narcolepsy. Sleep paralysis continues to be one of the many mysteries of the human brain, which science will continue to investigate.
Sleep paralysis is a condition that occurs at either the onset or upon awakening of sleep. The medical terms for the two forms of sleep paralysis are hypnogogic and hypnopompic (1). When a person falls asleep, the body secretes hormones that relax certain muscles within the body, causing it to go into paralysis. Doing this prevents the body from acting out a person's dream, which could result in an injury. Sleep paralysis generally runs within one's family or in those who suffer from narcolepsy (2), but there is currently no explanation for why some people get it while others do not.
Startled awake, hardly aware of reality, heart racing and drenched in sweat, people who suffer from nightmares are deeply affected by not being able to sleep in peace. Matters are made worse when the mare idea of going to bed to sleep starts the anxious cycle. Chronic nightmares can lead to sleep disruption and if not addressed they will develop into sleep disorders that require medical intervention.
Sleep disorders are an underestimated public health concern considering that fifty to seventy million Americans are affected. Technological advances in the field of sleep have facilitated various theories to explain the need for and the purpose of sleep. Scientist have uncovered many types of sleep disorders such as insomnia, sleep apnea, and narcolepsy. Sleep disorders affect men ,women, children, the elderly, and the obese in different ways. Factors such as the number of children and the effects of menopause have been studied to determine their effects on sleep. Various treatments have been utilized ranging from non-pharmacologic to pharmacologic methods. Scientist have pinpointed areas of the brain that are involved in sleep deprivation and hormones that ultimately affect sleep.
“Sleep is increasingly recognized as important to public health”(Brain Basics:Understanding sleep). Going without sleep can really change you cause all you will want to do is sleep throughout the day when you should be doing something else. It makes you not sleepy all day. You will feel great if you get the right amount of sleep needed. “It may be that we can reduce the need at least, because it’s so annoying to waste so much time sleeping.” You must fall asleep when are beginning to feel sleepy so you will feel a lot better. “Unintentionally falling asleep, nodding off while driving, and having difficulty performing daily tasks because of sleepiness all may contribute to these hazardous outcomes”(Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep). Going without sleep will not