Sleep Paralysis Essay

1166 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Sleep paralysis essayt

Sleep Paralysis is a lot more common than what I previously expected. Most people do not know what they are experiencing and that can be frightening. I have never experienced sleep paralysis before but I find the symptoms, causes, and treatments of sleep paralysis to be very intriguing. It is not something that I wish to experience because almost all of the cases I have researched have been unpleasant experiences. One patient described their experience of sleep paralysis, “I think I mean that sleep paralysis feels like it has no objective life. The experience is defined by a complete inability to interact with the objective world, while still being forced to exist within it” (Byrne). The individuals who suffer from sleep paralysis feel like …show more content…

Sleep deprivation seems to be a leading cause. When individuals go a long period without sleeping they seem to be more susceptible to suffering from sleep paralysis than individual’s who get enough sleep (Bradford 1). It can also be caused by changes in sleep pattern or jet lag. For example, if you start a night job and you have to sleep during the day. Your body is not used to that so it may cause sleep paralysis. It affects both sexes equally but is more common in teenagers, this could be because teenagers have the most erratic sleep patterns out of all the other age groups (Sleep Paralysis). Some believe that sleep paralysis is the after effect of an alien abduction, whatever the aliens did to the individual caused them to not be able to move or speak after waking up (Adler 32). It has also been linked to different types of medication, sleep disorders, anxiety, and depression (Bradford). When patients have been questioned about their sleep paralysis they have mostly woken up in the supine position, so sleeping on your back could contribute to sleep paralysis (Adler …show more content…

It is something that can happen once or twice in your life or something that happens for several years so treatment can be difficult, especially if you do not know the direct cause. For starters the person could stay off their backs as the sleep through the night (Adler 12). The individual could try and avoid alcohol, nicotine, and drugs at night as this could disrupt your sleep patterns. They should also not consume caffeine after 2 p.m. and make sure they get a good night’s rest, as these may contribute to sleep paralysis (Bradford). Some patients can get out of sleep paralysis by trying to move their fingers or toes, hearing another person speak can also bring the person out of sleep paralysis. This does not work for everyone, one individual had the experience of knocking themselves out of bed during sleep paralysis and it did not get them out of the experience

Show More
Related

  • Essay On Sleep Deprivation

    577 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sleep deprivation is a common condition that occurs if you don’t get enough sleep. In case of sleep deprivation people have trouble falling and staying asleep for a long period of time. In order to understand how serious sleep deprivation can be, one must need to know causes and consequences of sleep deprivation, how much sleep do we need? What does sleep do for us? And how we can cure sleep deprivation.

    Read More

  • Falling Asleep on the Job: The Story of Narcolepsy

    2394 Words  | 5 Pages

    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).

    Read More

  • Essay On Hallucination

    804 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Essay On Narcolepsy

    636 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Narcolepsy Essay

    1654 Words  | 4 Pages

    Narcolepsy has been above looked for years beforehand knowing a patient has the illness, it is a quickly producing awareness and is continually altering people and their families lives. With nap materializing to be not merely the ultimate pastime, but additionally a survival imperative, the earth of nap scutiny is quite large, bragging countless disparate spans of study. By scrutinizing phenomena like nap disorders neurobiologists can yearn to comprehend the mechanisms of normative nap, in supplement to perfecting treatment for suffers. Narcolepsy is one such disorder that affects an approximated 250, 000 or 1 in 2000 Americans; comparable numbers are approximated for Parkinson's or countless sclerosis (mayo-foundation). An comprehensive, nevertheless oftentimes misdiagnosed illness (fewer than 50, 000 are cognizant of their condition), narcolepsy can be delineated by chronic daytime sleepiness, cataplexy, nap paralysis, and hypanogic hallucinations (rare-disease). The last three of the tetrad of symptoms additionally transpire in non-narcoleptic individuals; nap episodes are the main determinant in diagnosis. Merely 20 to 25 percent of narcoleptics tolerate from all four symptoms (mayo-foundation). This paper has countless goals, all of that involve elucidating the illness and its symptoms in disparate contexts. In order to do this nap will main be elucidated in a slight detail, pursued by a biological and psychological treatment of narcolepsy. Scutiny of narcolepsy and its implications for the upcoming displays steps to be grabbed in order to garner a larger understanding this particular brain/behavior relationship.

    Read More

  • Understanding Chronic Insomnia: Causes and Treatments

    2042 Words  | 5 Pages

    There are many causes, treatments, symptoms and ways to diagnose insomnia. With that in mind there are also different kinds of insomnia. There are three main types of insomnia each type has their own symptoms and behaviors that go along with it.

    Read More

  • Sleep, Dreams and REM Sleep Behavior Disorder

    1428 Words  | 3 Pages

    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).

    Read More

  • Narcolepsy Informative Speech

    673 Words  | 2 Pages

    THESIS STATEMENT: Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder that has a specific medical definition, life-changing symptoms, and there are ways in how people treat it.

    Read More

  • The Origin Of Sleep Paralysis

    873 Words  | 2 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Sleepwalking Essay

    992 Words  | 2 Pages

    Could someone commit a crime or murder while sleeping? Could someone drive 14 miles from home without waking up or wrecking? How do you determine if someone was sleepwalking when only the victim and offender would know that answer and one of them is dead? How do some people get away with the sleepwalking murder defense while others don’t? Many questions come to mind when sleepwalking and murder come into play. While asleep people have been known to talk, walk, do simple tasks, eat, fight with your spouse and even have sex, but when it comes to the murder defense it a whole other story.

    Read More

  • Parasomnia

    1529 Words  | 4 Pages

    Parasomnia refers to a wide variety of disruptive, sleep-related events or, "disorders of arousal." These behaviors and experiences occur usually while sleeping, and most are often infrequent and mild. They may however happen often enough to become so bothersome that medical attention should be sought out. "Parasomnias are disorders characterized by abnormal behavior or physiological events occurring in association with sleep stages, or sleep-wake transitions."(DSM pg. 435)

    Read More

  • Sleep Paralysis

    585 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Sleep Paralysis

    1343 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Sleep Cycle Essay

    761 Words  | 2 Pages

    Maynard, W., & Brogmus, G. (2006). Safer shift work through more effective scheduling. Occupational health and safety, 16.

    Read More

  • Essay On Lack Of Sleep

    1137 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sleep is a very important factor in the human function. Our body and brain is able to reset itself and rejuvenate while we sleep. When we do not get the required amount of sleep, we start to feel lethargic and foggy minded, because our mind and body wasn’t able to replenish itself. Sleep is imperative that an insignificant rest deficiency or lack of sleep can affect our ability to remember things; decisions and can affect our temperament. Chronic sleep deficiency can get the body to feel agitated and it could lead to serious health problems such as, heart problems, stress, acne, and obesity.

    Read More

More about Sleep Paralysis Essay

Open Document