Sleep is supposed to refresh; but, if you chronically wake up feeling tired and the worse for wear despite getting a good eight to ten hours in, then you may be experiencing some sleeping disorders. Some issues, such as insomnia, are common enough for you to have heard others struggling with these. Still, there are a rare few that many of us do not even know exist because not many people talk about them.
Here are some oddball sleeping phenomena with enough “What the…?” to cause you nightmares just thinking about them.
PLMD and RLS
Periodic Limb Movement Disorder (PLMD) and Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) are two distinct sleep disorders but they sometimes occur in tandem. PLMD is characterized by twitches and jerks or involuntary limb movements. These movements may range from slight foot jerks to violent thrashing and flailing of arms and legs. PLMD may also involve nasal, abdominal, and oral movements. A typical episode may occur as short as half a second to as long as ten seconds. These episodes sometimes pan out at intervals between five to ninety seconds.Uncomfortable sensations in the legs and arms such cramping, tingling, burning, or itching mark RLS, also known as Willis-Ekbom Disease (WED). These sensations prod patients to move their limbs to get relief. In 80% of cases, RLS is usually accompanied by PLMD. RLS is prevalent among middle aged to older women and affects about 12.2% of insomniacs and 3.5% of people with EDS (excessive daytime sleepiness).
Both these disorders disrupt sleep to an extent that a person may develop chronic insomnia. Treatment may consist from simply correcting an iron deficiency to prescribing serious medication such as anti-Parkinson drugs, benzodiazepines, or even morphine to manage the symptoms.
Exploding Head Syndrome
Here’s an odd sleep phenomenon that you may never have heard of because of its rarity. Why the Exploding Head Syndrome deserves its name is the fact that basically the sleeper is violently awakened by a very loud noise going off close to his ears. The noise is often described as a huge bang much like that of a firecracker, gunshot, cymbal clash, or bomb, exploding by your ear.Truth is, no noise of that nature has actually manifested in the room of the sleeper or anywhere nearby. Although it seems so aurally realistic, the noise is really in the sleeper’s head.
Occurrences of the phenomenon can increase or decrease over time. Although more cases have been reported by people over the age of 50, teenagers or children as young as ten years old can suffer from this strange malady.
The syndrome is not painful or dangerous but it can be scary. The sufferer may develop a sleep phobia, thereby creating other sleep issues. Treatment for this syndrome may range from relaxation techniques to prescription of antidepressants.
Sleep Paralysis
While the Exploding Head Syndrome can be scary, sleep paralysis can be extremely terrifying. Imagine waking up from sleep, fully paralyzed. You can’t move your limbs, body, not even your vocal chords to holler or whisper for help. Plus, you feel weighed down by something which makes you experience shortness of breath. Many sufferers even report seeing a presence in the room which ain’t friendly.Whoa! Sounds like a victim in a horror movie. And so it seems. Sleep paralysis victims often attribute the phenomenon to malevolent supernatural causes; hence, the tales of incubuses, succubi, and more recently, alien abductors.
Sleep paralysis may last from a mere few seconds to a few agonizing minutes, but contrary to the scare it engenders, it is not a dangerous condition. However, it may manifest as an offshoot of anxiety and depression or it could even be an inherited sleeping disorder. Patients of narcolepsy often fall prey to sleep paralysis.
If you find yourself at its mercy, don’t fight it. Just go with the flow. Allow yourself to fall asleep again and you’ll be sure to wake up properly afterwards.
Sleep-Related Eating Disorder
If you’re on a crusade to lose the twenty pounds you’ve gained this year, SRED (Sleep-Related Eating Disorder) is not something you want to have to deal with. Aside from wreaking havoc on your carefully laid out diet, this sleeping issue can be dangerous in the sense that it involves sleepwalking and worse, even sleep-cooking!Maybe it’s your brain’s sneaky way of getting more gustatory delights from those chocolate chip cookie sundaes and Snickers Sonic Blasts you’ve been saying NO to during the day. Maybe it’s from your sleep apnoea, depression, or even stomach ulcers. Whatever the reason, the fact is SRED is not good; definitely bad from both the health and safety points of view.
The person with SRED will sleepwalk to food, typically to the kitchen, eat huge amounts of usually high-calorie food. They may even chop food or turn on the stove with the intention to cook. All while sleeping through it! The next day, the sleeper has no recollection of eating or cooking with just (barring sleepwalking accidents) a full stomach or little or no appetite for breakfast to show for the unremembered nightscapade.
Who are susceptible to SRED? Mostly women are but so are those with histories of substance abuse, alcoholism, and sleep disorders. Sleep specialists treat the SRED patient with prescription medications, lab monitoring, and de-stressing techniques such as counselling, assertiveness training, and the like.
Sexsomnia
Much like eating while sleeping, sexsomniacs have sex (in whatever form) while thoroughly asleep. The sex may manifest from simply annoying loud orgasmic moans to real humping with or without the consent of the humpee. In fact, there have been rape cases involving somnambulant ravishers who didn’t remember their crime because they were asleep.Sexsomnia, commonly known as “sleep sex” is a very rare sleeping disorder, or so we think. According to Dr David Cunnington, Director of the Melbourne Sleep Disorders Centre, sexsomnia is a lot like sleepwalking or sleep-eating. The disorder may be more common than we know. It just seems so obscure because people don’t usually talk about this for fear embarrassment and ridicule.
Sexsomnia may be caused by large amounts of liquor, illicit drugs, sleep deprivation and a history of sleepwalking.
If all you are worried about is a little bit of insomnia, don’t thank your lucky stars just yet. Insomnia may just trigger one of these or other more widely talked about disorders such as night terrors, nightmares, sleepwalking and the like. So take good care of your rest. Make sure you follow some sleep hygiene - consistent lights out schedule, no screen time two hours before bed, among others.
On this note, sweet dreams tonight!
