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| Why do some people's bodies suddenly become paralyzed at night? |
The first time this happened to me, I was young. It was early in the morning and still a little late to school when I woke up and I tried to take a crotch but my body wouldn't support me. I couldn't move. It felt like my whole body was paralyzed.
Although my mind was fully active, the muscles in my body were still asleep. My room felt warm and felt like the walls were getting tighter. I was very nervous but after 15 seconds I was fine.
Later this condition came to be known as 'Sleep Paralysis'. This is a surprisingly common condition that occurs during the night when the mind is awake but the body is temporarily paralyzed.
This happened to me several times after the first incident and each time my fear lessened, but it can have a greater effect on some people. Some people even have nightmares.
I spoke to Victoria, 24, who told me that this happened to her at the age of 18.
I woke up but I couldn't move. I could see a strange figure hiding behind the curtain. She jumped on my breast and the worst part was that I couldn't even walk. It felt completely original.
Some people have seen ghosts and even dead people. Some saw their own body parts suspended in the air, while others saw a copy of themselves standing next to the bed. Some people have seen angels and later feel that they have had a spiritual experience.
Experts believe that this same delusion fueled the notion of witches and wizards in Europe and may have led to cases in which some people claimed to have been abducted by extraterrestrials.
Experts believe that this situation is very old. Many writers in literary history have referred to such a situation. Mary Shelley wrote a scene in Einstein inspired by a similar painting, but the situation has not been researched until now.
Buland Jalal works at Harvard University and in 2020 he founded the first clinical trial to treat this condition.
Jalal is one of the few scientists who are devoting time and energy to researching this condition. They want to shed light on the causes and effects of this condition so that the mysteries of the human mind can be unlocked.
Until now, not much was known and little research had been done about people experiencing this condition.
In 2011, Brian Sharpless conducted the most comprehensive study. At that time he was working at the University of Pennsylvania.
They reviewed 35 studies over five decades and then, with the help of about 36,000 volunteers, found that the condition is quite common and about eight percent of people have experienced it.
A large number of them, namely 32 percent of psychiatric patients, while 28 percent are university students. "It's not very rare," says Sharpless.
Jalal says that the reasons are not too complicated. At night, our body goes through four stages of sleep, in which the final stage is the rapid eye moment, and in this stage, we dream.
However, during this stage, our brain listens to the muscles so that the person does not do anything during the dream and does not harm himself, but sometimes the brain wakes up before the completion of this stage, which causes the person to feel "He's awake, but the lower part of the brain is just putting him through the phase and sending the neurotransmitters of hearing to the muscles."
Jalal says that the sensory part of the mind gets activated and you mentally wake up but actually you are paralyzed.
There was a time when I agreed to go through this condition every two or three nights but it didn't affect my life much. It must have been an interesting thing for my family and friends.
"It's like sleepwalking," says Colin Espy of Oxford University. Most people who go through such a condition do not go to the doctor. It definitely becomes a topic of conversation.
But for an unfortunate minority, this situation proves difficult. Sharpless' research found that 15 to 44 percent of people who experienced this condition were clinically disturbed. Such people spend the whole day wondering when this will happen next time.
Espy says, "An anxiety arises and the person cannot get out of it, which can have the worst effect in the form of a panic attack (anxiety)."
In some individuals, such a condition may also indicate 'necropsy'. It is a condition in which the brain is unable to control the sleep process and sufferers may fall asleep at any time.
Medical experts say that this condition is common when there is a lack of sleep, but the most common and useful solution for treating this condition is awareness in which the affected people are informed about its scientific causes so that they Know that there is no danger to them.
In more serious cases, medications can be used to treat the person's anxiety.
However, the most effective of this condition is in the form of hallucinations. Commonly, hallucinations seen in such a state are a source of fear, but scientists also believe that they also provide surprising information about the human mind.
When a person enters this state, the motor cortex of the brain sends signals to the body asking it to move, but when the muscles are heard, the brain sends these signals. Z does not get an answer.
"As a result, the brain fills in the gap and invents an explanation for why the muscles aren't moving," says Jalal. That is why in many dreams, a person feels something pressing his body.
That's why some scientists believe that a human mind is a story-telling machine because the brain itself creates a dramatic explanation to find meaning.
Christopher French is the head of the psychology research team at the University of London. He has been meeting people who have had such experiences for a decade.
"Some dreams are difficult to explain," he says. In his experience, people have reported characters such as a black cat, a dead man lying on a mattress, and a mysterious ghost. Italians mentioned witches.
In another study, Jalal covered the experiences of people of similar age and gender from Denmark and Egypt.
They found that this condition was more common among the Egyptians and was more willing to accept some transcendental explanation for it. The Egyptian volunteers believed in ghosts and jinn, and this condition remained with them for a long time.
Jalal believes that 'the fear of extraterrestrial concepts also makes people more afraid of this state and because of this anxiety, this state is more fragile, which is an expression of the relationship between the mind and the body.'
"When you're anxious, your sleep system becomes disrupted, and so you're more likely to have this condition," he says.
"Suppose your grandmother tells you that something comes and attacks at night, so certain parts of your mind become alert because of that fear." Then during sleep, you feel something is wrong, I can't move, that thing got here.'
"Culture also seems to influence this condition."