In China, it is said that the devil is pressing on the body, while in the west, it is said that the devil is sitting at the head of the bed. In fact, it is sleep paralysis, which occurs when he is about to fall asleep or when he wakes up from his dream. Almost everyone will encounter sleep paralysis once or twice in their life. So, when you wake up from your dream one day and find that you can’t even do the most common action of opening your eyes, you should calmly think: Well, I finally experienced my first sleep paralysis in life. Then think about how to turn it into conversation. After a few minutes or even seconds, you can move freely.
not all sleep has sleep paralysis
Sleep paralysis does not occur randomly, it only occurs in a specific sleep stage rapid eye movements (REM).
Human sleep is divided into rapid eye movements (REM) and slow eye movements (NREM or slow wave sleep, SWS). The two of them took turns to work to perform sleep tasks. After four or five shifts, the day was bright.
The two sleep guards have their own characteristics. It is generally believed that NREM is always a pioneer and a model worker. It always welcomes us into every new sleep cycle and always takes the longest shift (a complete sleep cycle lasts at least 90 minutes and NREM lasts for nearly 80%). Rapid eye movement and dreaming are the two characteristics of REM, which is also the origin of the names of these two sleep guards.
The rotation system between REM and NREM is not always implemented smoothly. Sometimes, REM has no job opportunities due to some reasons. However, once REM can take up his post, he must conscientiously make up for the previous tasks. At this time, it may be REM who welcomes you to sleep first, and his post time will be extended accordingly. This is why sleep paralysis occurs when you are about to fall asleep.
dream and paralysis: a pair of conjoined babies
Although as long as you go to sleep, your sensory function will temporarily decline, your muscles will begin to relax, and a series of autonomic nervous functions will also change, such as blood pressure, heart rate, respiration and metabolic rate. But relatively speaking, during NREM, people can still change their sleeping posture, kick the quilt, and say two dream words during sleep.
But once entering rem, the sensory function will further decline, and it will be more difficult to wake up. Not to mention, the reflex activity and muscle tension of skeletal muscle (which is connected to the bone and completes a series of human actions by its contraction) are weak to no avail, and the muscle is almost completely relaxed. Then, one, two, three, we all became wooden people, unable to speak or move. But the muscles of the eyeball are easy to use and rotate quickly. The reason why skeletal muscles are almost relaxed during REM sleep, making the human body in a “paralyzed” state is closely related to dreaming during rem. Dreams are always strange. If people are not in a state of paralysis during REM sleep, they will make large-scale actions or violent acts under the control of dreams, hurting themselves or people around them. Therefore, if you want to dream, you must paralyze yourself first.
In addition, don’t say that you never dream, it’s just that you are lucky (or unlucky) and always wake up from NREM sleep, so you don’t know that you have quite a few dreams this night. Those who know that they are dreaming, don’t think that they have only had this dream all night. You just woke up when you had this dream.
brain awake, body not awake
Now it is clear that the so-called “ghost press bed” is only in REM sleep. For reasons unknown to modern medicine, the brain suddenly wakes up, but does not send out nerve impulses in advance to tell skeletal muscles to stop sleeping and get ready to get up.
When the brain finds this error, it will quickly send out the nerve impulses that should have been sent out before waking up, but this will take a little time. These nerve impulses are all bioelectrical signals. If you are in a hurry, they may have to be disturbed in the brain for a while before starting. So, be calm.
it’s easy to “get shot” when sleeping on your back, so you’d better sleep on your side
Although the cause of sleep paralysis is unknown, doctors have found some relevant factors. One of them is that sleeping on your back is prone to sleep paralysis. The reason is that lying on your back can completely paralyze your muscles. Once you wake up at this time and your brain has not done a good job in notifying you in advance, sleep paralysis is not negotiable. But sleeping on one’s side is different, because to maintain lying on one’s side, you still need to use some muscle force, and the muscles will not be so completely paralyzed.
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