What is sleep paralysis? Sleep paralysis is in the context of an illness called narcolepsy and its one of the oddest diseases you will run in to. Sleep paralysis is in the context of an illness called narcolepsy...
Sleep paralysis is in the context of an illness called narcolepsy and its one of the oddest diseases you will run in to. It's not nice to have it but it's fascinating to study it. It's a situation where at the same time you are both awake and in dream sleep at the same time. And under most circumstances that's impossible. Again what we said before about sleep is in an active process your brain turns on centers or releases inhibition centers that you inhibit when you are awake and vice versa. You inhibit centers in your brains that were fully active when you are awake. It switches these controls back and forth with sleep and does the same thing for dream sleep or REM sleep. For people with narcolepsy, they have the centers that can be waken and activated at the same time. You can imagine how disconcerting that would be to be awake and unable to move any of your voluntary muscles except the ones to breathe. You can imagine how frightening that can be. But again with dream sleep one of its characteristics is that you lose all your muscle tone. And if you are awake usually you still have that part of dream sleep still present and you can't move. You can't even open your eyes but you can yell and scream. People with sleep paralysis, they tend to have it upon awakening in the morning when they will be waking out of their dreams. Dream sequence, a REM period and those parts of the brain, will now be awake and alert and those parts will be activated. The part that has to be with muscle atonia will also still be activated. It's usually brief but it tends to be intense and it tends to be a very frightening experience. And know that you can hear voices around and you will know that this is daytime and you should be awake but you can't move.
It tends to brief but it's intense. It tends to be a constellation of symptoms you will see with narcolepsy that can happen by itself but usually it happens in association with the other things where you have sleep attacks. You will be talking or sitting or doing something and suddenly there is this overwhelming urge to sleep and you fall asleep.
Sometimes in the middle of whatever you are doing.
And as opposed to what we talked about before with elderly or sleep apnea or something like that, this tends to be more in young people whom you wouldn't recognize. You notice that it is usually in the mid teenagers that and these people typically are referred to as bad students or stupid. They are falling asleep all the time in the class not being able to remember anything because they are sleeping through half the class. They are dozing off and tend to be clumsy because they have these drop attacks. Again they will lose partial muscle tone again and drop or fall. They have a tendency for automobile accidents by falling asleep behind the wheel. This is another bizarre illness that causes hypnagogic hallucinations, and literally there are dreams associated with the form of sleep. You will have dreams come alive right before your eyes. You know what you are looking at or to know what you are hearing, seeing, touching, tasting or smelling those senses that you have in your dreams. You know this isn't real but yet there it is. There goes Mickey Mouse across the room. There goes somebody whose is in your family who has been dead for a long time and there is someone who is talking with you. And you know this isn't real but there they are and so you know these can be.
