“When I wake up, I realize that I cannot move. I try to say something, but I can't. I can very clearly hear everything that is happening around me. Sometimes I can open my eyes to see what is happening in front of me. Sometimes I get scared, and I try to fight, but nothing comes of it. I begin to breathe deeper. My children have learned to recognize my condition by the sound of my breathing. They touch me, and now I can move, speak, look around. This is how a patient with sleep paralysis, which had haunted her since childhood, described her life.
The woman's words were quoted in 1942 by a M. D. in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. The woman was 69 years old by that time. At first, these attacks of paralysis happened to her only at night, then they began to appear after a nap. Sometimes they happened several times a week, at other times they could be absent for months.
Demon on the chest
This lady's case is far from unique. According to some estimates, approximately 8% of the human population has experienced sleep paralysis at least once in their life. A disorder in which, falling asleep or waking up, a person falls into the state of a weak-willed doll, unable to move limbs or even ask for help, ejecting at least some sound from the chest. Paralysis can last anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes. It would seem quite a bit, but during this time a person who is conscious, but unable to control his body, can get pretty scared.
Especially when the next attack is accompanied by auditory or audiovisual hallucinations: footsteps in the room, sighs, voices and shadows somewhere in the periphery of vision. To this can be added a feeling of heaviness on the chest, as if someone had put their hard and cold hand on it.
Naturally, sleep paralysis is not a modern invention.
A well-documented case of sleep paralysis was first described in a 17th century medical treatise by the Dutch physician Isbrand van Diemerbreck, whose patient was a 50-year-old woman in good health.
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- When she tried to sleep, sometimes she believed that the devil was lying on her and holding her. Sometimes she was suffocated by a large dog or a thief that lay on her chest so that she could hardly speak or breathe. And when she tried to throw them off, she simply could not move her limbs, - the doctor described the woman's story.
Devils, demons … Sleep paralysis can be called the progenitor of many creatures from the demonic pantheon in the folklore of different countries. This disorder was reported in ancient manuscripts. True, they called it differently and associated it with the world of the paranormal.
The Canadian Eskimos, for example, considered such a weak-willed state on the border of sleep and wakefulness to be tricks of shamans, which took away the ability to move from a person. In Japanese culture, the culprit is a vengeful spirit that strangles its enemies while they sleep. In Nigerian it is a female demon. In Brazilian folklore, a character named Pisadeira fits the description of sleep paralysis. This is an old woman with long nails who roams on rooftops at night and rides on the chest of those who go to sleep on their backs on a full stomach.
In Slavic mythology, the latter is described as mara - a ghost that strangles sleeping people at night, leaning on top of them and bringing terrible dreams with it. Similar unpleasant paranormal entities in the mythologies of other European countries bear similar names. Actually, the origins of the French word nightmare (cauchemar) and the English nightmare can also be looked for somewhere in that direction. No wonder that the series of paintings "Nightmare" by Henry Fuseli is inspired by stories about ghosts and sleep paralysis. But today is not about etymology.
Demons of Science
As we have already found out, supernatural beings are accused of the causes of sleep paralysis for a reason. Visual and sound hallucinations, which are accompanied by paralysis of all organs, were difficult to explain to science a hundred or two hundred years ago, when religion and zabobons ruled human life. A blurred state of consciousness on the border of sleep and wakefulness is definitely capable of generating demons, especially when a person begins to panic and does not understand the reasons for his helpless state.
From a scientific point of view, hallucinations that accompany sleep paralysis are usually divided into three types: "uninvited guest", "unusual bodily experiences", "incubus".
An intruder is characterized by a sense of dread and unpleasant presence, accompanied by visual and auditory hallucinations. By "unusual bodily experiences" (vestibular-motor hallucinations) is meant the sensation of floating and the impression that the patient has left his body and can observe it from the side. "Incubus" refers to the sensation of an object pressing on the chest and shortness of breath.
As we have said, sleep paralysis is not often a chronic problem. Much more often - just an episode in life. An unpleasant episode. Up to 90% of attacks of sleep paralysis are accompanied by inexplicable, almost animal fear. This contrasts markedly with statistics that suggest that only about a third of the average person's dreams are frightening or disturbing.
However, in a clinical setting, it is quite difficult for doctors to study this disorder, since it is difficult to provoke it. And the patient himself can find it difficult to figure out when he actually woke up, and when he has a dream that he woke up and could not move. Like sleep paralysis, false awakening can be very realistic.
Just above, we cited 8% as a possible indicator of how many people on earth could experience sleep paralysis. But this is an estimate. In some groups, it can be much higher. For example, studies among psychiatric patients showed that 31.9% of them experienced this unpleasant sensation upon waking up. In patients with panic disorder, the percentage of "witnesses to paralysis" was 34.6. It also turned out that people of the Caucasian race are much less likely to experience such attacks. And yes, the study was conducted in the USA.
Sleep paralysis causes
Some researchers are inclined to believe that the occurrence of sleep paralysis may be associated with the phase of REM sleep, when the human brain has increased activity. It can be recognized by the rapid movement of the eyeballs under the eyelids. It is in this phase that we dream.
During REM sleep, the human body is practically paralyzed: only the vital organs are working. Muscle tone is reduced by signals sent from the brain by certain neurotransmitters (gamma-aminobutyric acid and glycine). This system prevents sleeping animals from actually performing the movements that they make during sleep. French physiologist Michel Jouvet demonstrated this back in the last century on cats, when, as a result of experiments and the removal of certain areas in the brain stem, his subjects ran, washed and chewed during sleep.
In 1993, scientists Dalitz and Parks suggested that a lack of synchronization between changes in the brain and a decrease in muscle tone could trigger sleep paralysis. As a result, a person wakes up as a weak-willed doll, which cannot even cry.
But why is there such an out of sync in the work of the brain and muscles? We understood the specific mechanism, but did not fully determine the reasons. Some researchers suggest that genetics are to blame. Others suggest looking for the reasons in the everyday nuances of our life, advise patients who are tormented by sleep paralysis to sleep more, adhere to a clear sleep schedule, and not abuse alcohol and pills.
First of all, Chinese and Japanese researchers came to this conclusion: first of all, you need to sleep well so that demons do not come to you in the morning to sit on your chest. The survey involved 90,000 adolescents. 35.2% of them had nightmares at night, and 8.3% experienced sleep paralysis. After processing the results, the researchers concluded that long naps, going to bed too early or late, having difficulty falling asleep, or having daytime sleepiness increase the chances of provoking paralysis.
Another study at Waseda University in Tokyo in 1992 conducted an experiment on 16 volunteers who had encountered a sleeping demon at least twice in their lives. For seven nights, they stayed within university walls, the researchers systematically woke them up after 40 minutes of NREM sleep, gave them a 40-minute test, and then allowed them to fall asleep for a while. After 5 minutes from the onset of REM sleep, the subjects were again awakened. Out of 64 interventions, 6 led to an attack of sleep paralysis. And all six were associated with REM sleep.
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The knowledge of modern science about sleep paralysis is still in its infancy. Nevertheless, significant progress has been made in the study of demons, which have frightened people around the world for centuries.
