Sleep Paralysis: A Conscious Nightmare
Cailey Solomon | December 04, 2012 2:56 pm
Everyone enjoys taking a relaxing afternoon nap every now and then, but what happens when you can’t move your body upon awakening? What happens when you can’t seem to move the blanket or pillow away from your face to get a deep breath of fresh air? This frightening experience is called sleep paralysis, a sleep disturbance that occurs at random. Because of the erratic nature of this affliction, medical professionals know very little about why it occurs.
What scientists do know is that there is a correlation between sleep paralysis and conditions like narcolepsy, seizures, and hypertension. That said, sleep paralysis can also affect healthy people that may not have any chronic conditions whatsoever; doctors categorize these cases as “isolated sleep paralysis.” Regardless of diagnosis, sleep paralysis has yet to be classified as a legitimate sleeping disorder, problematizing treatment and diagnoses for those people facing this sleep condition.
Sleep paralysis can occur with any type of person and usually happens when he or she is falling asleep or waking up in the supine position, where the front of the body is facing up. However, when it occurs, it is easily recognizable. The voluntary muscles of the body shut down as it is signaled that the body is ready to rest. Unfortunately, the brain does not send the message to the other senses, such as sight, sound, and hearing. So, as our muscles begin to relax, our mind stays conscious of our surroundings. It then forces the body to remain in this painful state until it fully succumbs to sleep or is somehow awakened by an outside force.
Being completely paralyzed is just one of the frightening experiences of sleep paralysis. Many patients suffering from this sleep condition also have hallucinations. There are two types of hallucinations that connect to the stages that sleep paralysis occur. Hypnagogic hallucinations occur at Stage 1 of sleeping (or sleep onset) and hypnopompic hallucinations occur during REM Sleep (or sleep offset).
Some patients have visually and mentally fearful hallucinations, such as the sight of an intruder in the room, the attack of physical or sexual assault upon them, or the off-the-wall images that defy reality. Because of these scary thoughts, some people have been misdiagnosed with a psychological or psychiatric disorder, leading them to treatment specific to psychopathology, or the study of mental disorders.
In some cases, patients are misdiagnosed with other psychological disorders instead of sleep paralysis due to similar symptoms. The causations of certain psychiatric disorders may be the same causations for sleep paralysis: stress, chronic fear, and anxiety. It is easy to understand that sleep paralysis could be more of a side effect to other disorders rather than a disorder itself.
The main reason for this vague distinction of sleep paralysis is because of the lack of information and experiments involving sleep paralysis. However, it makes sense that there is little description because, as I stated before, sleep paralysis occurs erratically and is hard to pinpoint when it will begin in a person. The best way to obtain the most information as possible on sleep paralysis is to target the main groups of people that could potentially experience sleep paralysis more often than the regular person.
The correlation between sleep paralysis and other psychiatric disorders limits those who may be affected by sleep paralysis. Working with the results of thirty-five specific experiments that were collected from databases such as MEDLINE and PsycINFO, Sharpless and his cohort found a high percentage of sleep paralysis in psychiatric patients and students in comparison with the population at large. Although Sharpless may not state the reasons for this strong correlation, stress and anxiety within these specific are the likely causes of higher incidences of sleep paralysis.
When it comes to ethnicity, minorities, such as people of African and of Asian descent, ranked higher in incidents of sleep paralysis than Caucasian descent; and of these two minorities, Asians ranked highest with incidents of sleep paralysis episodes. As it may seem, there is some sort of correlation between ethnic groups and sleep paralysis; however, there is so reasonable causation between the two. More research may uncover the reasons behind these correlations.
Although thirty-five studies do not give a substantial amount of evidence to sleep paralysis, each of their results direct to the same eight percent of the general population. This vague understanding of sleep paralysis is due to the inconsistency of its episodes with people this sleep condition. The best thing for researchers and doctors to do is to target the most accessible study group with the highest sleep paralysis percentage and focus on studying the causes and effects to each person’s behavior and lifestyle. Students would be best for this study since they are more accessible than psychiatric patients.
Without further scientific research, sleep paralysis will not be able to be distinguished as either a side effect or a disorder, making it not only difficult for future scientists to understand the entity of sleep paralysis, but the patients affected by sleep paralysis will have a greater chance of being misdiagnosed.
Further Readings:
“International classification of sleep disorders”
References:
Sharpless, Brian A., and Jacques P. Barber. “Lifetime prevalence rates of sleep paralysis: A systematic review.” Sleep Medicine Reviews. Elsevier, Inc., 2011.
Categorized Under: Psychology, Neurology
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