What is sleep hygiene? What to know to do it right and some tips for better sleep."Sleep paralysis is usually not a serious health concern," she says, "but if you experience the symptom frequently, speak to your healthcare provider to evaluate for other underlying sleep disorders or medical conditions that can contribute." Read more about sleep below Lipford reassures that episodes of sleep paralysis aren't anything to panic over, but should be discussed with a physician if the condition seems to persist. "Only go to bed when drowsy and minimize time in bed awake," Walker suggests. Doing so includes straightforward practices such as avoiding caffeine, large meals (or late-night snacking) before bed and putting away screens prior to bedtime to reduce stimulating blue-light exposure. The best way to avoid sleep paralysis altogether is to "keep a regular sleep schedule and get an adequate amount of sleep consistently," Walker says. "Although it may feel like an eternity while you're going through it," Walker says, "your body will naturally come out of sleep paralysis." He says one's body, "typically self resolves sleep paralysis within seconds to a few minutes at the most." "Most individuals will then drift back off to sleep and wake up with no issues." She also suggests making small movements of one's fingers or toes and taking slow breaths to recover more quickly. "The most important strategy is to tell yourself this is a temporary experience and will be over soon," says Lipford. Still, because the condition is alarming to children and adults alike, it has been linked with heightened cases of anxiety and increased stress at home, school or work. While startling and even frightening for some people, sleep paralysis is not harmful and should pass quickly. "We often dream more the second half of the night, including just before we wake up, so sleep paralysis is thought to be a carry-over of this REM sleep-related paralysis into wakefulness."Īs such, sleep paralysis can happen to anyone but may also be triggered by other factors. "Sleep paralysis can happen when a person is sleep deprived and is more common in people with other sleep disorders," says Melissa Lipford, M.D., a neurologist at Mayo Clinic, Rochester. "When we go into a dreaming state of sleep at night (REM), our body has a mechanism that paralyzes our muscles, which is a great thing so that we don’t act out our dreams," Walker explains. Most commonly though, sleep paralysis is merely a continuation of what occurs naturally in one's body during sleep. While the exact cause of sleep paralysis remains unknown, experts say there are often multiple contributing factors or disorders involved, including insomnia, narcolepsy, sleep apnea, substance abuse and sudden changes to one's sleeping schedule. Colloquially, these hallucinations may be referred to as “sleep paralysis demons.” What causes sleep paralysis? A tendency to hallucinate has also been associated with the condition. During sleep paralysis, a person may also find it difficult to take deep breaths or feel like their chest is constricted.
Sleep paralysis is "a condition where you feel paralyzed just before falling asleep or, more commonly, when you first wake up in the morning," says Kevin Walker, MD, the medical director of Intermountain Health Sleep Disorders Center in Utah. It most often occurs between stages of wakefulness and sleep when, for a very brief period of time, a person may be unable to move or speak.
Whether you've experienced this sensation once, or do so frequently, it's important to understand what sleep paralysis is, what causes sleep paralysis and what options there are for sleep paralysis treatment. While prevalence varies (one study found it in as many as 38% of participants) researchers believe that generally, about 20% of people experience sleep paralysis at some point in their life. For others, the prospect of bedtime comes with a frightening – and often recurring – condition of being temporarily unable to move at night, a state of being known as sleep paralysis. The focus ranges from sleep hygiene to wanting to fall asleep faster and even coping with sleep apnea. Many adults have worries when it comes to their sleep.
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