Sleep paralysis has brought some scary images and stories. Now scientists are beginning to understand why people wake up from dreams but can't walk - and why they can sometimes continue dreaming.
I was a small child when it first happened. It was early in the morning, several hours before I got up to go to school.
I got up and tried to turn over in bed, but my body wouldn't let me - I couldn't do anything, I was paralyzed from top to toe.
Although my brain was conscious, my muscles were still paralyzed or asleep. I panicked. Finally, after about 15 seconds, the paralysis went away and was normal.
Later, I got a name for what happened to me: Sleep paralysis or sleep paralysis. It's a surprisingly common phenomenon during the night where part of your brain wakes up while your body is temporarily paralyzed.
After that first scary experience, it became a regular occurrence, and it happened to me every two or three days. The longer it was, the scarier it became. Eventually it started to bother me.
But sleep paralysis can affect life more. And for others, it comes with scary things. One 24-year-old patient I spoke to, who asked to be identified only as Victoria, remembers it happening one night when she was 18. "I woke up and couldn't get up to walk," she says. "I saw a scary figure hiding behind my curtain. It jumped on my chest. And the scariest thing was that I couldn't scream. It was dangerous."
Scientists think that this problem of paralysis of the body when coming out of sleep occurs more and for a long time if you are sleeping. Mary Shelley was apparently inspired to write a scene in Frankenstein by a painting depicting an episode of paralysis. But until recently it has been little research.
"It has been neglected ... but in the last 10 years there has been a growing interest," says Baland Jalal, a sleep researcher at Harvard University who in 2020 completed a study that could be the first clinical trial in different ways to treat the disease. of paralysis.
Until recently, it was not clear how many people get or experience sleep paralysis.
Is it a problem with a cure?
Sleep paralysis can be a sign or symptom of a disease called narcolepsy - a disease in which the brain cannot control sleep and wake patterns, causing a person to fall asleep at inappropriate times.
Doctors say paralysis is more likely to occur when you are sleep deprived, because your sleep architecture is fragmented. Some patients also find that they are more likely to experience it when lying on their backs, although the explanation for this has not been confirmed.
A common way to treat this problem is education: patients are simply taught about the science behind the condition, and reassured that they are not at risk. Sometimes finding time to 'reflect' is an acceptable method. The goal is to reduce the patient's fear when going to sleep, and to teach them to be calm when they experience paralysis when they wake up from sleep.
Sometimes when the situation is worse, drugs can be used - including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which are commonly used to treat depression but have side effects.
"When you're anxious and stressed, your sleep pattern will be out of whack, so you're more likely to be paralyzed," she says. "Let's say your grandmother tells you, 'A creature looks like this, it comes at night and attacks you'. And because of this fear, [you] have a seizure, the fear centers of your brain pick up on that".
"It seems like it's a habit that can create this amazing effect."
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