Sleep Paralysis - WatsonsHealth

SLEEP PARALYSIS

Sleep paralysis is the activity of the brain during sleep that causes the muscles to relax. This happens between the stage of wakefulness and the stage of sleep, and causes inability to speak and move the body for a few seconds or minutes. and stops on its own, or when someone touches or speaks to the sleeping person. Sleep paralysis usually starts during teenage years, but usually happens often at the age of 20s and 30s. This is normal, and not to be worried about. It is not a fatal medical issue.

“Isolated” sleep paralysis occurs when no other narcoleptic tendencies go along with it. Something is narcoleptic when it makes you sleepy and you can’t control it.

When isolated sleep paralysis keeps repeating, it is already a parasomnia, or a sleep disorder that involves abnormal movements of the body, uncontrolled emotions, and/or misbehavior during your sleep.

Isolated sleep paralysis makes a sleeping person feel anxious and scared. Some people experiencing this hallucinates. They see, hear, or feel things or other beings that aren’t in their surroundings.

Isolated sleep paralysis is something that need not to be neglected, especially because recurrence of this does not disturb your sleep, so you might not know that it happening again.

These are the symptoms of sleep paralysis:

  1. Inability to move your body while being awake or asleep
  2. Episodes that last only for a few minutes or even just seconds
  3. You have other sleeping disorder
  4. You have a medical condition
  5. A mental health disorder
  6. You’ve been experiencing substance abuse

DIAGNOSIS

If your sleep paralysis episodes make you worried and anxious, it’s okay to talk to your doctor about it.  The doctor needs to know everything medically related to you – past medical history, past and present drugs and treatment, family members that also had or is having sleepdisorders, when did the sleep paralysis start, how often does it occur, and how long it lasts.

Before the physician gives you medication or treatment, he will have to examine you while sleeping in an in-lab sleep room. He will study your sleep recorderd in polysmnogram, or sleep study chart. He will take not of the movements of your brain waves, your heartbeat, your breathing, and the movements of your limbs. He might also use electromyogram recording to note the level of electrical activity in your muscles (which is supposedto be very low during a sleep paralysis episode).

The sleep doctor might also need to study your nap time if you tend to feel very sleepy during the day. A Multiple Sleep Latency Test will be used to measure how fast you fall asleep, and what kind of “nap” you take. This will give him the idea if your sleep paralysis is narcoleptic.

 

TREATMENT

The treatment of sleep paralysis is towards the cause of it, or whatever factors triggered the paralysis – sleep deprivation, or psychiatric problems. Another plan will be made to treat these factors.

If you have other sleep disorders, you might need an antidepressant to lessen dream sleep, and ease the paralysis. Antidepressants are not only medicated to people who have depressive disorders. It can also be used to reduce sleep paralysis.

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