THE DEMON IN YOUR BED
The Paralysis Onset
Many of you must’ve wondered why in some cases while asleep, you feel as though your body is completely paralysed even while conscious, and then you have a rush of adrenaline as if you’re about to be attacked by a demon, or there’s one just close to you. Well there is no demon at all and all you feel is completely normal.
What It Really Is
It is called REM sleep and considered as one of the phases of the sleep cycle. It’s name simply means Rapid Eye Movement Sleep and it’s indeed characterised with rapid movement of the eyes.
REM sleep occurs in about 1 hour 30 minutes after you’ve fallen asleep. Your eyes move rapidly from side to side behind your closed eyelids.
Brain Representation
Mixed frequency brain wave activity then gets similar to that seen during wakefulness. Your breathing becomes faster and irregular, and your heart rate and blood pressure increase nearer to waking levels. Although some of your dreams can occur in non-REM sleep, most actually happen during the REM sleep. Your arm and leg muscles become temporarily paralyzed in a hypotonic fashion, which prevents you from taking immediate action. As you advance in age, you sleep less of your time in REM sleep.
Memory consolidation may most likely requires both REM and Non-REM sleep.
Summary
There are four stages of sleep and stages 1-3 are known as the non-REM sleep characterised by quiet sleeping, while the stage 4 is the REM sleep which is characterised by deep sleep which is absolutely normal.
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Hmm this was a needed post. You cleared a lot of my doubts and the explanation is very easy to assimilate for readers who aren't familiar with too much technical terms like I am. Thanks for this contribution
You’re welcome, and I’m glad it was really helpful.
Nice write up
Thanks chief
This is really nice
Thank you 🙏🏾
Very educative article. I enjoyed reading this. I'm sure this has cleared alot of questions.
Just a little contribution, if you can make a subscript of some terms that would be highly appreciated(for the non-medical readers).
Thank you, I’ll do that next time.