Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Sleepwalking

Episode Date: May 6, 2014

Welcome to Sawbones, where Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin McElroy take you on a whimsical tour of the dumb ways in which we've tried to fix people. This week: We sneak a cookie in our sleep. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers (http://thetaxpayers.net)

Saabones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a twin that's lost it out. We pushed on through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth. Wow! We're really and welcome to Saw Bones's a marital tour of Miss guided medicine. I'm your co-host Justin Macaroy And I'm Sydney Macaroy welcome home sweet. Thanks. You're starting from time for work. No, I'm glad to see you a long day at the office and There's kind of something I wanted to talk to you about tell me anything Well, I um my way up, I noticed in the living room, there seems to be a new piece of art as it were. Yes, yes, yes, what do you think?

I, well, when, why, when, how did that happen? Where did it come from? It's a, well, it is a professional portrait, a painted oil snatch. Right, I noticed it was, it was, that's you, right? That is me, that is me. Mostly you. Yes, I felt like we didn't have enough stately art around the house. So I commissioned a

portrait of myself To us was to hang in the home. Well now when you say us. Yes Let me just clarify. Am I that small figure that you can kind of see in the doorway in the background of the painting? The one looking at me adorningly, yes. Right. The one that seems to say, with eyes that seem to say, my hero. The one who appears to, I think, only be wearing an apron and high heels. That's correct. That is, yes, that is you. I think it's a wonderful likeness. Yeah. Well, I will say it's flattering.

Thank you. I didn't do the portrait, but I'm I'm I can glad you approve of the art. Now a quick question. I wasn't sure if it was you I think in the painting you have a mustache. I am I did give myself a mustache as part of the commission. I also requested that I be wearing an Ask Contents smoking jacket. I did want sort of a more grown up look, I guess, sort of something a little more stately. And I want something that's gonna last long term, and I do feel like the mustache will be a natural sort of evolution as I get older.

Right, and am I right in that you're holding an autograph photo of Michael Jordan that says to my good friend Hoops? To my good friend Hoops, that's correct. That was also a little bit of artistic embellishment. I'm so glad you enjoy it. I'm glad that you think it's a great addition to the house. Well, I mean, yes, it definitely adds something that wasn't there before. Okay painting. Uh-huh. How much did this cost? Art and finance, the old question.

Okay, that's pretty large. Can you put a dollar value? Yes, no, there's definitely a dollar value that I'm seeking here. What, I mean, because I mean, even the frame looks really nice. It is. I'm not that I know anything about frames, but it just,

it's Mayflower wood. It's made from wood, they said. From the Mayflower. Wood from the Mayflower is what the frame is made out of. Like the boat that the pilgrims came on? I can't tell you how much it cost. You can't, you can't or you won't. What is the tell you because it is just occurred

to me that I ordered a very specific commissioned painting of us while sleep walking. It just occurred to you. I just remembered that I was sleepwalking with the organ wafers. You remembered that you were sleepwalking? I just remembered sleepwalking and ordering this very specific commission portrait of myself wearing an Ascot and a smoking jacket with a mustache and a sign picture of myself that that autographed to me from Michael Jordan to the system of different hoops.

Right. And me in the background and an apron. Correct. That is you. Okay. But you, so you do remember that, but you don't remember how much it cost. It's funny, isn't it? You know, you never know what's gonna get lost. But yes, I was sleepwalking. So that is my excuse. Well, that's a terrible excuse. Okay, all right, fair enough. Because one, I don't believe you. That's well, you should not. That's good, that's good insight.

Lean into that. Two, that's not really how sleepwalking works. Okay. Well, how does that work? Well, maybe I should tell you some about sleepwalking. Absolutely. Hit me. I'm ready. I will. And I'd like to say thank you to Janine, who recommended this topic for us. Thank you. Janine, you're the tops. So, first of all, since it seemed that you don't know what sleepwalking is,

why as a sufferer, I feel like I should know. As a one-time only sufferer. It comes and goes, you know? Yeah, so sleepwalking is also called some nambulism Senambulism Some nambulism You can probably piece that together like some like sleep like sombalance, you know and the amble like walk Walking in your sleep. There's some Latin there for you. I love it

So if you ever hear that you can use that word and impress your friends and It is one of the parasomnias. So one of the sleep disorders. Okay Now it's in the simplest explanation is that it's getting up and moving around while you're asleep Okay, which you could probably piece together if that was a multiple choice answer on a test. Hopefully get it right I'm still on sort of the base level of awareness of sleep walking right. I don't even feel like the deep dive is truly. No, no. It's, so let me give you some, some things about it.

So it's not just as simple as you did something in your sleep. It usually happens in the first start of the night and it's in your deepest stage of sleep. This is important because this is different than like REM sleep when you're dreaming. That isn't the deepest stage? No. REM sleep is actually a much lighter stage of sleep. I did not know that. And there is a disorder REM sleep disorder where you're not, you should be paralyzed while you're asleep, so to speak. I mean, you're not literally paralyzed, but you can't move while you're in REM sleep,

while you're dreaming, and that prevents you from acting out your dreams. And there is a sleep disorder that makes you, you know, your body doesn't work right and you act out your dreams. That's not what sleep walking is. Sleep walking happens in the deepest ages of sleep. It usually lasts about five to fifteen minutes, although episodes can last up to an hour. And very importantly, the sleepwalker is unresponsive during the episode and has no memory of it afterward. You know what? I, in ordering a commission portrait of myself in oil with Mayflower would frame.

I was acting out my dreams to be fair. So maybe I was doing the other. Oh, so you think you have the other thing now? I think maybe the other thing is the thing that I have. A lot of the, whether or not one could perform such a complex action. I think is up for debate. Um, but, uh, either way way I still don't believe you. That's fair. It's completely fair.

Now, while sleep walking can just be a genetic condition, it can also, it happens to more people than you'd think, because it can be brought on by stress, illness, sleep deprivation. So if you go a couple nights without sleeping, pregnancy. Ah, yeah. So have you noticed if I wandered about at all? Only the pea. Oh, that's not I'm awake. Okay, good. I am unfortunately awake every one of those times. Okay. Alcohol can bring this on. And some drugs most notably Ambian. Dad. That's right. Your dad, I think, what did he buy some Jolly Pirate Donuts? And...

Drove around or something? Just around and then did not recall doing so. Yeah, so, and I think a lot of us have heard those horror stories of people on Ambien and drugs like Ambien. That sounds like such a horror story. Do you get home hay-free donuts? Yeah, well, I mean, that one ended happily. It could have broken much worse.

I admit, but... It's much more common in children. It usually peaks about age 12, and then a lot of people grow out of it. Oh yeah. But up to 30% of kids have at least one event of sleepwalkings. That's wild. Isn't that crazy?

Oh, no, okay. Science, at least 30% of kids snuck down to the kitchen to get a cookie and try to pull a fast one. Let's not go crazy here. I think that's a Justin statistic there. No, I think Justin snuck down to the kitchen 30% of the time to get a cookie. 30% of nights, I went downstairs to get a cookie.

I never snuck downstairs to get a cookie. You went to get like broccoli and stuff. You should healthy. Only one to five percent somewhere in that range of children actually have sleepwalking disorder. And when we go up to adults between one and seven percent of adults have episodes,

but only 0.5 percent of adults have the disorder. What's the difference? I mean, if you have in the episodes when I mean, don't you have the disorder? Well, if no, because it depends on why you're having the episodes, I mean, don't you have the disorder? Well, if no, because it depends on why you're having the episodes.

And how many you have and the nature of them. So if you get super drunk a lot and a couple times when you've been super drunk, you know, walked around in your sleep, that's not really sleepwalking disorder. Okay. That is another problem. That is another thing. We call alkalism. Please talk in your sleep. That's not really sleepwalking disorder. Okay. That is another problem. That is another thing We call alkalism. Please talk to your family. No alcoholism alcoholism. Alcoholism is You are too base

That's when you need to get some lemon juice up there. Yeah, you need to introduce acidity in your Yeah, basically all baking soda. So let's talk about kind of the history of sleep walking. Take me, all what it is. Take me all the way back, Sid. Okay. To the very beginning of sleep walking treatment. This isn't very long ago. Oh, really? So this is the interesting thing.

Unlike a lot of disorders, sleep walking, while we've known about it for a super long time, and we've been writing about people who, you know, were sleepwalkers for a long time. It wasn't really regarded as any kind of disorder for the most part. So it wasn't anything that was written about

in a medical way for most of history. For instance, hypocrite's talked about it, like noted that there were some people who did this, but that was kind of the end of it. Right. Gailin wrote about it. Diogenes was known to be a sleep walker and he wrote about some of his own experiences with it,

but it wasn't in any way to kind of, to try to explore why it happened or what the medical basis was for it. It was just kind of, hey, isn't this crazy? This happened. It's weird, right? It was in that eye opener section of the newspaper, you't this crazy? This happened. It's weird, right? It was in that eye opener section of the newspaper, you know?

Oh, back and old in times, you don't work that many ways. You could, like bad things couldn't happen to you, though. Like, there weren't cars that we didn't have cranes that you could operate. Like, there was nothing that could happen. Is that what you think people who are, the worst case scenario operator cranes? You fall on a spear, maybe.

Like, there would be a spear that you get Hold up like that's it. That's all they had to worry about you'd wander into the place where they keep the bears that they were going to Battle in bear baiting the next day. Well, where is this what point in history? Are you the place where we keep the bears? Well, okay, if you're gonna do bear baiting like you would probably have to keep them somewhere Before you don't just like plan a bear baiting for the next day and then help that you're gonna do bear baiting, like you would probably have to keep them somewhere before, you don't just like plan a bear baiting for the next day and then hope that you're gonna find a bear. You probably get the bear first. I don't know about this history of bear baiting.

You're gonna have to fill me in on this someday. On next week's episode of Saw Bones, bear baiting. What's up with that? Adjusting Macroi Special Investigation. How sweet it was bear baiting, It wasn't. It's very sad. It sounds sad. It is how we got teddy bears. Did you know that?

No. I don't know any of, I don't know what you're talking about. Skater res me out wouldn't shoot the bear. Oh. Yeah. And so they, they, you know, I wouldn't shoot bears. Wouldn't shoot a bear that was like chained up.

Oh, well, that makes sense. Yeah. So. No, he was too cool for that. He would, he would have hunted the bears. Let it go put some honey on my belly. Let me fist fight this mother grab her for a second and then we'll see who's brings to brain. Then we'll see who's on top. What's up walks off. They carry a big bear beating stick. He would a pretty cool guy. But that's not really good fodder for our podcast. He's in here and right there. Why are you distracting me? Well, let me get back to you.

You know I love talking about bear bathing. So I understand. Because I'm confused to things, by the way. The bear bathing, I think, is different from chaining up a bear letting theater as well, should it? I think it sounds very different. I didn't know bear bathing was a thing until exactly. Bear bathing is when you're-

A minute ago when he started talking about it? Just fight a bear. Like just fight it. Like her feelings. That's kind of cool. I mean, yeah, except they probably drug it with honey. Well, no, that's, is it poo bear? Get it sleepy.

Is it Winnie the Pooh? They fist fight Winnie the Pooh. This is horrific. They were terrible people. Why are you distracting me? Tell me about like who, who like who you say wrote about it. Okay, so because nobody really understood it and it wasn't seen as a medical problem, but more of this kind of exciting mystery and intriguing topic, it was fodder for a lot of, you know, artwork. So to speak that Shakespeare wrote about it. Most people are familiar. Lady Macbeth. Sleepwalker. She was sleepwalking. And that revealed a lot of the kind of understanding of it is that

on some level, you know, Lady Macbeth during the daylight hours when she was awake was not confessing to her horrible crimes, but at night as she sleepwalking, the guilt would overcome her and she would have to confess, which was connected to, if we understood it at all, it was, well, we might, in our sleep reveal things, we wouldn't reveal otherwise, which made it more exciting. And there's an opera and a ballet, I think, Balini wrote about. Wow. Wow. About sleepwalking.

So I'm assuming we were probably blaming it on God or Satan or something. Right. And the. I mean, in the beginning we really didn't know what caused it, but we weren't that interested through the medieval times. Obviously, we have to link it to religion. So, it's either God working through you or on the flip side, it might be the devil. Best to just get out of the way. Yeah. Either way. Either way, it's something you probably don't want to, yeah, yeah, you don't want to get too entrenched with. Later on, it was seen as a, we did that whole episode on epilepsy. It was seen as related to epilepsy. Is that accurate?

For whatever reason. No, but for some reason, it became connected to that if you're epileptic, that you might also sleepwalk. It was kind of uncontrolled movements. You can't control yourself in some way. There were attempts in the 1800s for people to actually start describing it in some sort of like medical way. And they were differentiating between natural sleepwalking,

which is somebody who just, for whatever reason, was a sleepwalker. And then the sleepwalking events that are brought on by maybe hysteria, so somebody, they have some cases of people who were grieving, who would walk in their sleep, hypnosis. As hypnosis became popular in the late 1800s, there were people who would walk around under the influence of hypnosis, and obviously that was different, or illness. You know, people with feverish would sometimes walk in their sleep. And so they begin to kind of divide this out without any explanation as to why.

And there was this kind of sense that maybe it had something to do with your spinal cord as we begin to understand the nervous system. Your spinal cord's working, but your brain isn't? Yeah, maybe. No. No. No, but that was the best they had. There were others who saw this is some sort of evidence that maybe there's just, maybe it's our soul. Maybe this is what happens when the brain's asleep at night

and the soul can take over, or maybe some outside force. Because there were some sleepwalkers who were noted to even those who would walk around with their eyes open because sleepwalkers can have their eyes open. Would write music or great texts or one minister wrote sermons and they actually covered his eyes while he was writing to see if he could continue to write and he was still writing even though that his eyes were open but he clearly wasn't seen. But it was just his sermon quote unquote was really just a big list of you might be a red

neck if jokes. He had heard so it's not like I mean it wasn't very moving or profound. It's crazy how old those jokes are. It really is they didn't even have red necks. It transcended time. And ironically those made him a lot more money than his sermons ever. It's weird. He never did it.

And that is how Jeff Foxworthy was born. Jeff A'Raias Foxworthy, AD 14. Number. The end. This is what we've been leading up to on solvents. So thanks for listening. The series finale. Jeff Foxworthy.

Some of these cases in retrospect were probably other sleep disorders, kind of what we talked about, people acting out their dreams, people who talk in their sleep, not necessarily the same thing, night terrors, that's a different class related, but different.

And nobody really knew what to do about it. For the most part, it was considered harmless. So they weren't like freaking out to fix it. They have like other diseases that they could not even begin to understand that were actually hurting people. Exactly. So somebody who just wakes up laying in their kitchen, that's not particularly concerned about anybody.

Yeah, my mother's arm just turned black and fell off. So like, just stay out of my way while you're walking around asleep, I guess. I read one suggestion that they they actually were they used at a school for boys which was they would have the sleepwalker sleep in a bed share a bed with one of the non sleepwalking students and they would tie them together sure because then when the when the sleepwalker would try to get up out of bed you would wake up the non sleep walker uh-huh

but then and then I thought oh well that's clever because they would wake up the non sleep walker and then the non sleep walker could wake them up and prevent them from hurting themselves and know what they say next is then they could jerk back on the rope and make them fall and wake themselves up. That's very lazy approach. So one way or another I'm sure that worked. In the 1900s, we actually started doing like investigation. And one of the first people to really start digging into this was Baron Carl Ludwig von Reichenbach. This was a guy of many talents. He had a PhD in philosophy, but he studied chemistry, geology, metallurgy, all kinds of stuff. He also wanted to establish a new German state in the South

Sea Islands. That was a project for about five years. He failed at that, as we know. He was an admirer of Mesmer, uh, yeah, followed in his footsteps, he studied magnetism and a lot of his work on magnetism is actually pretty solid science. But in addition to that, he came up with the idea of something called the Odic Force. Odic Force. What is the Odic Force? The Odic Force controls and propels all of human life. It is within us, around us, everything that is living is filled with this force. It's similar to magnetism and heat and a lot of other kind of elemental forces, electricity, things like that, but it's different.

Mojo from the Austin Powers films. It's Mojo. Basically Mojo. That's where it comes from. Got it. Or the force, if you prefer. Yeah. Name for Odin, the Norse god. And this is where the sleepwalkers come in. So he wanted to study this force.

And it permeates all living things. So you think it'd be easy to study because it's everywhere, right? But the thing is, only sensitives, people who he deemed sensitives could see the force. Okay. And he was unfortunately not one of them. Sure. Right. Which is a crazy theory that he came up with when he wasn't one of them. Yeah. It's a terrible curse that he had to deal with that he couldn't see these incredible forces. But he learned a lot about it because he later went on to say

it has a negative and a positive, it has a light and a dark side. I'm telling you, it's the force. That it comes from the hands, the mouth and the forehead, but you can't see it. So how did he figure all this out? Well, he got sensitives and then the main way he recruited sensitives

is he looked for sleepwalkers. Kind of based on the idea that sleepwalkers were attuned to this odick force at night when they were asleep and allowed it to guide them. Whoa, so they were doing like useful things that the Odick force wanted them to do. Exactly. Or just following the rhythms of the universe or something. Or whatever. Or whatever. The only way you could see the Odick force is if we put you in a dark room for a really long period

of time. And ways that anybody are just sensitive. Just sensitive. OK. So basically, he recruited sleepwalkers. He wrote about all of their nocturnal wanderings. And then he put them in dark rooms and waited for them to see the forces.

And they must have said they did because we have all these facts that he collected about Odec forces. He probably just wanted to get out of the dark room. Yeah, see it. Whoa, man, I'm really freaking out. It's like crazy or whatever. Can I go, please?

I'm starving and it's freezing in this stupid room. This didn't really help us at all with sleepwalking, with understanding sleepwalking. No. But the Odec force has persisted. This didn't really help us at all with sleep walking, with understanding. No. But the Odec Force has persisted. Some people still believe this idea of some sort of vital force, and they'll even call it the Odec Force is true.

It's been the subject of popular culture, and books, and video games. These are these of it. Well, did we have any, like, actual hard science on science on this like actual people studying this? Well, I'd like to answer that question for you Justin, but Unfortunately, you've fallen behind on your payments again I have figures just when I'm about to get to the good part. Yep. That's how it always happens I'm gonna need you to head down to the billing department. All right. Let's go department. Alright, let's go.

Okay, Sid, I give up who is studying Odec forces. So, I'm sorry, sleepwalking nobody in their right mind is studying only the barren was studying Odec for. There are a lot of people since then, but as far as sleepwalking goes, of course, Freud had to get in on this. Oh, yeah. He's not going to miss a trick. He said, you know, I know what this is. This is the unconscious is taking control at night when you least expect it. And it's a physical expression of your unconscious desires. One of two things, he had two theories. So this is either an attempt to act out unconscious desires. One of two things, he had two theories. So this is either an attempt to act out sexual desires at night in your sleep,

which is odd considering that most sleepwalkers just kind of wander around. I sexually want to sneak downstairs and eat crunch berries sexually. So I think that portrait you ordered downstairs was probably a sexual desire. Well, there wasn't an unconscious desire. I very consciously wanted that. So that maybe that rolls me out. I don't know. The other the other theory was that when a sleepwalker you know gets out of one's own bed and starts wandering

away from it, that they are attempting to return to their childhood bed. Very literally, they're trying to get back to the bed that they slept in as a child. I think he was just taking a shot in the dark here. I don't think he knew. No, I don't think so at all. But these fall right in line with everything else Freud thought. So there you go. It's either about sex or your childhood, right? Or your dad, which he didn't say, but in the 50s, some of the,

we're talking the 1950s, some of the biggest researchers into sleepwalking and parasomnias said that this did have something to do with your dad. They agreed with old Freud that it had something to do with your unconscious, but they said it was a result of repressed hostility towards your father. Why? And at night you would get up and try to act out your aggressions towards your dad or whatever a story. Okay, so good news parents whose kids are sleepwalking.

If you're worried that they were going to go to a knife, go to the kitchen, get a knife and try to kill you, that is definitely indeed what they are attempting to do. That's the whole point. There are there are sl-manturian candidates, style sleeper agents, literally sleeper agents that are in your home, in your child's bed, using them off the sleep tour, or the r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r- Kong Xu Kong Xu, you got it, you're bad. What's that? Is that a chucky doll? No. It's your child who's been activated by his rage towards you. Sleep tight, parents everywhere.

Is this what little Nemo was about? Is that how it ended? I never read the end of that conference. But that's the last panel. That's how it ended. It was in murdering his father. That's how it all wrapped up. Now, don't worry, moms.

Apparently, it's just dance. It was in murdering his father. That's how it all wrapped up. Now, but don't worry, moms. Apparently it's just dance. It's just dance. The thing is, with the invention of the EEG later in the 1900s, we started to understand sleepwalking a little better because we could see that you were in this very deep stage of sleep and not actually, as I said, in REM sleep when you're dreaming. So it's not like you're just acting out dreams

or trying to get to do stuff that you don't get to do when you're awake. You're actually in very deep sleep where your brain is very inactive. But as I said, it happens the first third of the night. So your body has just settled in. So that's one of the theories is that maybe it's that your brain's not doing much but your body hasn't calmed down completely.

Why exactly that manifests the sleepwalking? Still not completely understood. Then that goes on to explain why maybe kids are more likely to sleepwalk than adults. Their brains are, you know, they're really busy. There's a lot of development going on. You think about the difference between, you know, a newborn and a five-year-old. Think about how much stuff you learn and are able to do in those five years. Sure. Do you think you're going to change that much in that kind of period of time?

Well. So, I mean, you know, that's, so that kind of explains why kids might have might be more likely to To sleepwalk. Can I ask you a question? I've always heard that if you if someone is sleepwalking You shouldn't wake them up. Is that true? That is actually not true. It's okay to wake sleepwalker. Oh, yeah The main reason that that grew out of was you don't want to startle them if they're in some sort of precarious position to make them fall. So that's why a lot of the time they'll tell you the best thing to do with the sleepwalker is just to gently guide them back to their bed. Or wake them up with a hug.

If you're strong. Well, if you're going to wake them up, just don't startle them. Wake them up gently and make sure they're not like, I don't know, standing at the edge of a cliff or something or on one of those steel girders at like a construction site that seems like something that might happen. Like in a pop-up like art thing. Exactly. Okay good. Yes, I agree that seems like a not an ideal place to stop a sleep bar. If it's your child, they'll probably grow out of it. If they don't, there's therapies, there's behavioral stuff, there's some meds that can help. It really depends. The main thing is keep dangerous stuff away from them. Maybe lock their bedroom door

so they can't get out. Okay. I want to know though. I want to see, I want to see, I want to be able to pump a baby cake. Although you can't lock their bedroom door because what if there's a fire? So you can't do that. No, you certainly can. No, you just want to keep them from, you want to keep them away from stairs and you want to keep them, you don't want sharp things near the bed right keep their windows Should that's a pretty good roll overall for kids not locked but shut Yeah, just try to remove dangerous stuff that they may get into weather Okay

If you develop this as an adult go see a doctor got it. Yeah, that's that's unusual and you should check in okay So what I think is interesting about sleep walking is as Justin has you tried to do early in this episode, it's been used as a great defense because many people can just claim they didn't know what they were doing and they did some sort of crime while they were sleep walking. Ah, very clever.

As a result, there have been multiple examples of murder trials throughout the years where the defendant claimed sleepwalking as their defense. And sometimes they've been successful. And then other times they've been thought to be lying and, you know. Like you. So.

Give me the quick ball points. So, okay, most recently, 2008, Brian Thomas was on holiday with his wife in Wales when he claimed that he dreamed she was an intruder and murdered her accidentally while he was asleep. He was acquitted. Yikes! That's not how sleepwalking works. I know. They could have used our expert podcast testimony in that trial. There was a woman in Australia who was having sex with lots of strangers while she was sleeping. We should say just to be clear, we don't know all the details of Brian Thomas's trial. I have no idea. There could absolutely be a legit reason. Yeah.

Does it seem how sleepwalk works? Maybe that's what happened here. Maybe he had REM sleep, you know, sleep disorder. Very possible. There was another man who was under a lot of stress. He had some history of substance abuse issues. In the middle of the night, sleep walking drove to his in-laws house and murdered them. And he reportedly had a great relationship with them beforehand, so it was a really weird case.

That's super strange. I think the best though, the last case I want to tell you about, is a French detective named Robert Le Drew. This has to be the subject of some movie I just haven't seen. So he was asked by the local police force to help them investigate a murder that they couldn't crack. So he started trying to figure out, you know, who murdered this person, and he discovered footprints at the scene of the crime. What was unusual about the footprints is that the the big toe of the right foot was missing in the footprints. They were bare feet. Somebody did it, you know, walk there with bare feet, but their big toe was missing. Okay.

What was especially unusual is that Robert himself was missing his big toe on his right foot. Holy crap. And he remembered a morning that he had woken up with wet feet. What? So he turned himself in. Was it him? He believed it was him. He presented his case and said, I did this. He had contracted syphilis before and he said

he had had episodes of sleepwalking. He believed as a result of the syphilis. So they locked him in a cell until they could prove it. They kept him there and watched him every night and sure enough, he eventually walked around the sleep. Holy crap. So it was exiled out to the countryside, kept under watch by guards and nurses. That's right. That's a wrong word. Sorry, it's a bad break.

Interesting story, though. That's going to do it for us for sleepwalking. Thank you so much for listening to our program. We hope you've had as much fun listening as we've had recording it. Thanks to people tweeting about the show like Reggie Clark, who actually tweeted to Dr. Drew that he should listen to our show, which is pretty cool. Thanks to Alice DJM Alex Alex DJM, excuse me, stealing Zin, John William, Seth Macy,acy Burton Taylor Sarah Jamie Green Michael L Hoffman Dally Hayden Peters Christian White Billy Bob Angela golf so many others You guys are all the tops. We're at solbona's on Twitter if you'd like to follow is there a tweet about the show

You can use the link solbona show.com that goes straight to our home at maximum fun Dot org speaking at maximum fun dot org. We've got a lot of great programs for there for you to check out. That's right, we do. Jordan Jesse Go, the Goose Down judge John Hodgman, Bullseye, a great show about pop culture, you should check out. Uh, uh, gosh, song exploded. Lady to Lady, Ana Ross and Carrie. My brother, my brother and my mom.

Oh, thank you so much. Sydney, they're all waiting for you at maximumfund.org. Along with our forums, go there there discuss this week's episode in every episode of our program that maximum fun on work. There's a new family waiting to welcome you in thank you to the taxpayers for letting us use their song medicines as the intro and outro of our program and most of all, thank you so much to you for listening. We will be back again with you on the very next Tuesday until then I am Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. Thank you so much for visiting it and as always don't drill a hole in your head. Alright!

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