Stuff You Should Know - How Night Terrors Work

Episode Date: August 1, 2016

Night terrors, an uncommon sleep disorder, happen when the brain doesn't transition correctly to deep sleep. The result is terrifying, with the sufferer genuinely terrified, swatting at invisible attackers, and screaming for help - all while sound asleep. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

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Go to squarespace.com and set your website apart. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from howstuffworks.com. I'm Josh Clark. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And there's, yep, there's Jerry. This is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. We are in our deep freeze chamber.

Yeah, it's a little cold in here. It's freezing, and I'm never freezing. No, I don't know what's going on. Yeah, like I just, video producer Casey just, pushed a big rack of frozen beef carcasses by. Right. So I think they're moonlighting, you know, as a beef carcass freezer.

That's right. A butcher. When I said, I don't know what's going on, I meant literally, I'm confused from hypothermia setting and affecting my brain. You're just generally confused about everything. Yeah. Well, it's cold.

Cold as H. Cold as heck. Chuck. Yes. Have you, my friend, ever had what's commonly referred to as a night terror? Are you referring to a sleep terror? Or Pavor Nocturnus?

Or Axis 1 colon 307.46? Or a possession by a demon? No, I don't think so. I haven't either. Thank goodness. I would probably remember, I would think, as a child, having these. Although, not necessarily, unless your mom or dad said,

hey, there's something really wrong with you, kid. Well, it would have been a thing, in other words. Right. Yeah, because that's a good point. I was going to say thank goodness that we didn't have that, but really thank goodness for our family. Because when you have a night terror or sleep terror, you typically aren't capable of forming any kind of memory

of the event. Certainly of anything that's driving you to sleep. Anything that's driving you crazy with fear. Yeah, you wake up surrounded by your entire family who's sweating bullets with lots of terror on their faces. Shaking. And you're like, what's going on? Yeah.

Where are the pancakes? I was going to say Twinkies, but yeah, it works too. Did you eat Twinkies for breakfast as a child? Well, no, I kind of more imagine this happening at two in the morning. Nobody wants to cook, but you can grab a Twinkie pretty easy. I bet what would be good, since I recently invented the Reese's cat.

Right. And people actually ate them. Yeah. Take a Twinkie, get a pan hot. Oh yeah. Spray it with some, or even better, get a stick of butter. And run it over the pan.

And then get one of those bacon grill presses. And then smash two Twinkies down. I don't know if you should do that last part. And griddle them up nice and crispy. Wow. Yeah, maybe you should do that. Were they really golden brown and not just fake golden brown? Yeah.

Man, that'd be good. You know, I quit ultra processed foods, but I might try that actually. Yeah. I mean, I'm joking, of course. I would never do that. I've had a Twinkie. I think I ate one for that episode, but I don't know.

That was the last Twinkie you had? Yeah. I don't think I've had too many since then either. But that sounds good. What you just said, a crisp, buttery Twinkie. And that'd be good. It does sound kind of good. That's what stinks about having extra pounds is people probably say,

yeah, Chuck does eat Twinkies all day. Well, they call you Twinkie behind your back. I don't. I eat fried chicken all day. That's my problem. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Fried chicken will do it.

But it can really be worth it, depending on the fried chicken. To be raised in the south. Where's the best place around here? Well, some of the grocery stores around here have great fried chicken in their deli. Really? Yeah. I don't go to fast food fried chicken. Oh, yeah.

No, I'm not surprised about that. I figured you'd say something like Mary Max or something like that. Oh, occasionally at a nice restaurant that has overpriced fried chicken, I'll try it. Mary Max is good pretty much across the board with everything. Yeah, that's good. Have you ever had their mint julep? No.

Oh, it is so tasty. It's huge. Oh, is it? Yes. It's just great. Well, that's because they have to satisfy the aging alcoholics that go there for lunch drinks. Yeah.

Mary Max Tea Room is in Atlanta, by the way. Oh, yeah. Everybody knows that. And it's a classic old school southern restaurant. But it's a tea room, so it's supposed to be a little nicer. It's not like a meat and three. Right, exactly. But it is a meat and three.

Yeah. And Mary Max is also very famous for Mary Max having suffered night terrors as a child. Yeah. See? People thought we were on a tangent. Not true. No, that was all written out. So, night terrors, I have never had them that I know of.

I did recount my sleepwalking episode and our sleepwalking episode. Right. Well put. And by the way, we did sleepwalking. The science phasing out sleep, October 2010, is sleep that important, September 2008, a robust 13 minute episode. Sleepwalking August 2010. Is there a disease that kills us by preventing sleep?

October 2014. And that's it. What about lucid dreaming? Oh, okay. Yeah, sure. And then... But I typed in sleep as the keyword, so it didn't come up. It's gotta be more.

I think there's a couple more even that are sleep related. Well, you know what? Dreams would have brought up a few more then. You're right. Yeah. So anyway, if people want to hear everything we know about sleep... The sleep suite. The sleep suite.

That's it. But yeah, we haven't done... Oh, and then by this time we'll have done... What was the one we just recorded about sleep? Gettysburg Address? No, it was a Parasom needed too. Oh, geez. Man, we just recorded it. It hasn't even been released at this moment.

You know what I'm talking about though, right? Yeah, but you put me on the spot, so I can't think of anything. I can't either. I put both of us on the spot. Yeah. It'll be added to the sleep suite eventually. And here's another contribution. So we're talking night terrors.

Like you said, there's some other terms for it. Apparently, if you're serious about researching night terrors, you call them sleep terrors, because as was pointed out by a couple of pedantic sites, they can happen anytime you sleep. If you take a nap during the day, you can suffer one of them, so you really shouldn't call them night terrors. That's true. Yeah.

If you're one of those six-year-olds that works the late shift, and you sleep all day long, that is severely pedantic. But that's... I was being unfair because adults can get them. Sure. It's much more common in children, let's just say between four and 12. The best number we have is about 6.5%. There is one... I don't even know about this one. One study said 40%, but I think we should just throw that out the door, because nowhere

else did I see that. Yeah. There's a... Oh, really? You didn't see that one? No. Did you? No, I didn't. It's somewhere around 6% of kids from anywhere between 2.5 to 12 years of age typically will

suffer night terrors. There's... You're going to find out that there are very few things that are known about night terrors, sleep terrors. There's tantalizing clues here and there, but no one's ever sat down and really connected the dots. There's nobody. There is virtually no sleep terror researcher that I came across. Yeah.

I came across a few academics talking about it, and there have been apparently a few studies or whatever, but there doesn't seem to be anybody who's focused on night terrors, which is really strange to me, because if you do start doing research about night terrors, you find that there is a lot of anxiety among parents. Yeah, for sure. This would help a lot of people, a lot of families, who are disturbed by this. Well, I can't imagine being a parent and having your kid like, I mean, it's not a nightmare. We're going to make the distinction over and over.

It's different. It happens in a different time, which we'll get to during sleep, but it is terror, like hyperventilating, and your heart rate is increased. Your eyes might be open, even though you're still asleep. You talk about terrifying. Your pupils will dilate. That's the stuff of nightmares. You've got the fight-or-flight response going on while you're asleep and can have your

eyes open. Can you imagine anything more creepy? Oh, no, that's very creepy. Well, that's part of the problem. I think that's one of the things, not just being woken up by your kid having a night terror, the fact that they're moving around, like they're scared to death, but there's nothing, and they're like walking around, they're like pushing you out of the way. They're interacting with the world as if they're awake and scared out of their minds,

but you can't connect with them. You can't console them because they're asleep. They're not actually interacting with you. They're not hearing your reassurances because they're not awake right now. They're in another world, the world of sleep. It's really bizarre. Oh, are you sure they can't hear us? Yeah.

You have to wake them up, and you're not supposed to do that, secondly, but they're not there. They're physically. Gotcha. And they're acting like they're there. They're not there. So they're literally inconsolable at that point while they're having a night terror. So yeah, for a parent, and this is your little two or three-year-old kid suffering this, you can't do anything about it, you just have to wait for it to go away, and these things

can last up to like 15, 20 minutes, and there's nothing you can do aside from keeping them from harming themselves. Yeah, plus that means you're awake for 20 minutes when you should be sleeping. Just pounding twinkies. Gender-wise, boys and girls get it about the same, so it's really no difference. Yeah. And it's not like menstruation. No, that's 100% gender-specific, as far as I know.

We haven't done an episode on that specifically, though. We did female puberty. That's enough. Is that all? Yeah, we did male puberty and female puberty. No more? Done. Yeah, we brought it up.

So gender doesn't matter, and they typically tail off after you're a little kid, but you can get them as adults, and they say after 65 years old, you are almost certain to not have a sleep terror, and I just assume it's because nothing scares you at that point. You've seen it all. Except teenagers. Yeah, except you're impending death. Yeah, and teenagers. Which probably reminds you of your impending death, really.

Probably. The world changing and all that. Yeah. Yeah, there's a clue right there. Over 65, night terrors are almost unheard of. Another little tranche of life where they're very much unheard of is adolescence. So you might have them when you're pre-pubescent, and then they go away during adolescence, and then they might pick up again as an adult, yeah.

What's going on there? It seems to be, as far as the very few people who are thinking about this stuff, there seems to be some sort of agreement that it has to do, especially in children, with the developing central nervous system. Yeah. You know what? That's a great place for us to take a break. Nice.

We're going to look up what central nervous system means. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound, like poltergeist? You'll leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right. You said central nervous system and, um, do you know what it means? I do. I went and looked it up.

It's this, uh, descending string of nerves that goes down from your brain and hangs down over your body. That's right. I think. Like a marionette. Yeah. It is very much like that. Um, so you, wow, that was a great analogy actually.

Yeah. It just blew my mind. Thank you. So you just teased before we left about having to do with the central nervous system. Um, apparently our, our CNS matures up until the age of about 25. Do you know what CNS means? Central nervous system. Right.

Um, but I was kind of surprised. But 25, I was shocked that it was that late. Uh, apparently it's a fairly recent finding a relief among science that it used to be, you know, 18, 19, 20, that's what I thought, you know, end of puberty. Yeah. Um, no, supposedly now they, they believe the CNS keeps going and developing until 25. Uh, well, we should talk a little bit about sleep. I know we covered this in that awesome 13 minute episode, uh, how sleep works.

Yeah. Just the stages of sleep. Yeah. It seems like this was better explained than our entire 13 minute episode. Yeah. And we talked about it in the dreams episode too, and we had a TV episode of our science channel show called night terrors. Yeah.

Poor Kent Klinkenbeard slept walked. Uh-huh. He had sleep apnea, all sorts of terrible stuff. That was a fun episode. Um, and, and there's even a continuity mistake in that episode, if you remember. Oh, probably several. Um, did you know our first three episodes are up on YouTube in full? Oh, really?

I think somebody actually sat there with their phone and recorded it on their computer and then posted it to YouTube. Now is it the real first episode, meaning the pilot? No, that was the 11th episode. Was it the one that they aired first? It was actually episode two, but it was called episode one, wasn't it? All I know is coffee, but I coffee bought that was the first one, wasn't it? That was episode one, it wasn't episode two.

Yeah. That was the pilot. Yeah. The pilot was episode 11. Yeah. But that was like a totally different format. No, the pilot, remember it was broken up between body dysmorphic disorder and zombies? Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

That's the pilot. No, that wasn't. Yes, it was. That was the, that was what we shot as proof of concept that they ended up airing. As the pilot, they, they call it pilot swear. But the pilot episode of the real show when we actually were in a different location was, was coffee bought, which they aired, I guess, 10th. Coffee bought aired first.

No, it didn't. Really? Yeah. That was the rub. Man. It's like, why would you air the pilot last? Well, we aired the pilot last twice because they showed the proof of concept one at the end.

Right? Yeah. So much, they decided to air one extra episode. Oh, man, what a rabbit hole that was. So talk about it terror. Yeah. This, this article here says we spend about a third of our lives in deep sleep. Well, that's not true.

Just sleeping. And I think that's true. Well depends on the person, of course. Sure. Yeah. I guess that's true. I equate that with the sitting at red lights thing. I've always been suspicious of that.

Yeah. I've always been. How much you drive? Yeah. X number of days at a red light. Yeah. These are broad percentages, I think. Yeah.

I have a friend that is so like, that I think started worrying about his death early on in life and trained himself to get as little sleep as possible so he could do more. Oh, that's neat. And dude, since I've known him in the, in his early 20s, has been getting like five hours or less sleep a night. Five hours. Yeah. And lazy.

Good. Yeah. He's good with that too. He should listen to that as a science phasing out sleep episode because it was, remember, a lot about pills that help you stay up for 48 hours and then just sleep for a normal like eight. He didn't need pills. He just trained himself, huh?

Yeah. That's pretty interesting. All right. So when we go to sweepy time, there's something called adenosine, adenosine, a chemical that starts to build up in your body, in your brain, in your brain, right? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, it's a neurotransmitter.

Okay. At the very least, it's present in your brain. I don't know if it's manufactured there. You know a lot of your serotonin, like a tremendous amount of your serotonin is actually produced in your gut. Oh, that doesn't surprise me. It was surprising to me the first time I heard it because you think it's a brain, it's a neurotransmitter.

So obviously the brain's going to generate, no, most of it's in your gut. No, I mean, I guess it doesn't surprise me in that I know that a lot of healthy gut life, life, like a healthy gut can affect way more parts of your life than just like digestion. Yeah. So anyway, that builds up the adenosine and then serotonin, like you mentioned, that goes to the brain and says, all right, let's shut it down for the night. Shut it down, everybody. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

Exactly. Then they play Rick Astley on the loudspeaker. Oh, is that what they do to get people out? Well, every bar has their own song. Okay. Is Rick Astley a go-to, though, you think? I could see it. Yeah, I used to play at Mexicali Grill in college.

I would play when we had the Greek fraternity big groups on the deck late at night. I would play Public Enemy really loud. Oh, yeah. And they didn't like it. I'm sure. And we loved it. Nice. So we drove them out and they went back to the fraternity house and did whatever they

do there. Watch Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. Is that what they're doing? There is a great Letterman top. I used to have this book of Letterman top 10 lists from the 90s. Probably a third of the jokes that I've said on the show really are like rooted in that book. Yeah.

And that was one of them. It was like top 10 signs you're in a bad fraternity. It was like every Saturday night is Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman night. Your secret fraternity handshake consists of quietly holding hands for long periods of time. Zima Kegers. I think Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman is probably top five least cool shows of all time, you know.

Yeah. Murder She Wrote is up there. Oh. Okay. Fine. It's uncool. Yeah. I watched that show at least once a week still.

What? I love that show. I love it. On Netflix. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. I think it's probably on Amazon Prime too. Do you really watch that?

I really genuinely like it in a totally non-ironic way. Well, Angela Lansbury is pretty sexy. I don't know about that. But it's just, it's a cozy little show, especially, you know, she travels abroad and goes to Europe and New York a lot. Those episodes are like so-so. For me, the ones that are set in Cabot Cove and there's like a storm and a murderer and all that.

Like Maine, I think. Okay. New England. So it's like a quiet little town and, you know, something happens and it's just like a cozy show. You and me can't stand it. And it's not like she doesn't like the show itself. It's just like Angela Lansbury is such like a school mom to her.

She always feels like she's in trouble. Right. Just when she was in the house. In the background. Yeah. That's funny. So she's not a big Murder She Wrote fan. She just walked through when it's on and be like, stop telling me what to do Angela Lansbury.

Yeah. No, I won't go to my room. Um, all right. So where are we? We're falling asleep because the, the- Because Murder She Wrote's on. Because Murder She Wrote's on. And then we enter stage one of five.

Four? Uh, five. Well, technically five. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So there's four stages and then a fifth.

An encore. Yeah, I guess. So it doesn't, isn't considered a stage, it's its own thing. Well, stage one is when you're, you're sort of in that place where if things are all good and you're not super anxious, don't have a lot of anxiety, it's nice and quiet. It's dark. Um, that means you're heading into sleep. The things are not great or you're anxious or something's disturbing you.

You could fall back awake from stage one. Right. It's that tenuous period. Yeah. That's stage one. Yeah. That is stage one. If you have a book, you're going to sleep in stage one.

That's right. It was Exploding Head Syndrome. That was the one. Oh, right. Of course. Uh, so you go on to stage two, you start drifting off and this is apparently where you spend a lot of your sleep time, although I don't know that this is necessarily true. Your brain waves start to take on a different form.

I think they go from alpha to maybe beta. Okay. They're slowing down a little bit. You're calm down. You're not thinking quite as much. Your eye movement stops and you're just basically in that twilight period where you're basically sleepy, but you could be awakened fairly easily. Correct.

Until you get to stage three. Yeah. That's when things get real. That's when these, there's something called Delta waves and they were discovered by a guy named W. Gray Walter in the 1900s. Who's very gracious not to insist that they're called Walter waves. I totally would have. He's like, go with Delta.

They operate between zero and four Hertz and those Delta waves are what make, they're responsible for the restorative aspect of sleep. Like when you wake up and you feel great and refreshed, say, thank you Delta waves. And that doctor, I guess he was a doctor, Dr. Walter. He was a student of Hanberger, Hansberger. Man, that's close. It's so close. So much so you shouldn't name your kid Hansberger.

No. Hansberger invented the EEG machine and then Gray went on to make that machine a little bit better. He improved upon it, which is what allowed him to discover. These knobs are ugly. I'm going to replace them with orange ones. He looks old. That allowed him to discover the Delta waves.

I got you. Which are great. Those are, that's. Those are my favorite brain waves. Yeah. Even the name Delta waves just sounds very soothing to me. Yeah. Delta wave.

So you're in, did you say stage four or three? That's what things get cranking up in three and by the time you're at four. It's all Delta waves. All Delta all the time. And like you said, that's where you get that restful sleep because this is where tissue regeneration and repair takes place. Your brain is shut down. Like your, your executive function is turned off.

You're not thinking, you're not judging, you're not chewing over like all the stupid things that you said wrong and how you could have said them better that day. Oh man. None of that's going on. You're just kind of out like a light, but your motor strip is still conceivably active. It can be. And your emotional centers are able to be activated as well. For the most part, they're not.

You're just out. Right? Right. So stage four, you totally shift gears and you enter REM sleep. So the first four stages are non REM sleep. And then you enter REM sleep, rapid eye movement, sleep and it's called that because your eyes just go nuts. So all over the place, the rest of your body's paralyzed and your brain turns back on and

starts producing the same brain waves, alpha waves that you have when you're awake. So you're thinking, you're dreaming, you're doing all this stuff, but your body's paralyzed. Right? And the whole thing starts over again after about 90 minutes. You go back into stage one sleep. Okay? Yeah. And whatever you do during REM sleep, don't go back to Rockville.

It's terrible. What's funny is I think you make that joke every time we talk about the stages of sleep. Well, I do, but it's a different song every time. I always do. Okay. Yeah. It's just a bad REM reference. Right.

I just feel like I have to. I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm on the list of my dumb REM jokes from all of our very sleep cat. People, don't waste your lives. Yeah. Seriously. Go volunteer for a charity instead.

So the whole, that whole cycle between the four stages in REM sleep takes about 90 minutes. And then through about the first half of say you're, say you're getting a good eight hours, first four hours, those first four stages are going to take up most of that 90 minutes to 110 minutes. Yeah. And REM is going to be less. And then about halfway through your REM is going to start getting longer and longer in the cycle.

Right. So the second half of your sleep, you're dreaming more. But again, it's the important point here is during stage three and four, you're not dreaming. You're just out like a light. Yeah. And I guess that what you just said before that explains why I often feel like I remember my dreams or dream heavier toward my waking hours. Yeah.

And I guess also, if you are in REM sleep and you awaken from it rather than awakening during one of your other sleep cycles, you're going to remember your dreams because you're regaining consciousness, you're awakening, but again, your brain's been on the whole time. Yeah. You're just becoming aware of what you were just thinking. So you're going to be able to form those memories. When you're sleeping in say stage three or four, as we'll see, you don't form memories

because your brain's not working like that. Yeah, I probably asked you this in one of our dreamcasts, but are you able to pick up a dream after you've woken up and it's something you want to resolve or keep doing? Not really. I got pretty good at that. Have you? That's pretty neat. Yeah.

It's not quite dream sailing like we talked about, but I definitely like, it happened this week. I was having a dream that was great and I woke up, went and used the bathroom sitting down so I don't wake up enough and then was like, all right, and I just like think about nothing but that as I go back to sleep. Oh yeah. It worked. Okay, where was I?

Yeah, I got right back in it. That's awesome. Yeah, it's pretty neat. But I'm still not, which is the one where you control the dream? Is that lucid dreaming? Yeah. Dream sailing. I wouldn't say that.

That's where you're like, and now I'm going to fly. Watch this and then you fly in your dream. Can't do that. All right. So those are the stages. Good extra info there, by the way. I didn't know that about the varying time cycle as you sleep. I thought it was sort of all equal.

I bring it. You do bring it. So what they do know about night terrors or sleep terrors is between three and four, stages three and four is when this is happening. Yes. In other words, part of it has to do with this transition that happens between the stages. They just don't know exactly why. No.

And it doesn't really make sense because both stages three and four are considered deep sleep. It's just deep sleep and super deep sleep. It's something during that transition can cause night terrors. Yeah. And the nightmares, I don't know if we fully said this, nightmares occur only during REM sleep. Right.

But that's one distinguishing factor from night terrors. Yep. And the fact that you can, you know, you can remember a nightmare. Right. You can remember a nightmare. Nope. You wake up and you might still feel fearful for some reason, but you don't wake up and say there was a beast in my room trying to kill me.

Right. It's kind of like how when you're watching Law and Order and you're like super into it and like you just hate the murderer in this episode and then on comes like a, like a shaman ad and you're like, this, why do I feel so like mad? And then you realize, oh, it's because I'm still keyed up from Law and Order. Same thing with the night care. Like you don't remember why you're fearful. Yeah.

You just feel fearful still. It hasn't subsided. Gotcha. I've never seen that show, but I was hanging in there. You've never seen Law and Order, huh? No. That is not possible. I don't watch many major network TV shows.

Law and Order has been on for like 20 years and you've never seen a Law and Order. No. You're missing out. I've never seen CSI. I've never seen any of those shows. Yeah, that's fine. You're missing out a little bit with Law and Order. It's a really great procedural cop drama.

Now that's the one with Lenny that had Jerry Orbeck, right? Lenny. Who I love, that guy. He's great. But he's not the only one that's great. Like virtually every single person who's been on this rotating cast has done a great job. Huh.

Well, didn't a Saved by the Bell guy get on there? Or was that another? Zach? Yeah. Didn't he eventually? He was on one of those perceived cop procedurals. He was on a lawyer procedural with one of the guys from Clueless. Really?

Yeah, the skateboarder from Clueless. What? Yeah, they were like goofy lawyers. Oh, no, no, no. That's a different one. I know you're talking about that. I don't know if Zach was ever a cop. Oh, no.

I'm thinking of Ricky Schroeder. Didn't he end up on Law and Order? Boy, this is one of those moments where people are screaming at their computer right now. I genuinely don't think it was Law and Order. But it was something like that. I know what you're talking about. All right, well, let's take a break and we'll figure out, you can be Ricky Schroeder and I'll be Zach.

All right. Ready? Three, two, one, go. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'll be there for you. And so will my husband, Michael, and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. If so, tell everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye-bye-bye. And defrosted tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so where we left off was that they're not sure why it happens between three and four. There's something to do with what they call a snag in this transition.

It's pretty science-y. Yeah, it's a snag. So a snafu. Yeah, pretty much. Again, they think it has to do with your central nervous system still growing. But I mean, that's weird because it only happens in some kids. And like that exploding head syndrome, it happens in just the same way. So there's something amiss here.

It's not just like a normal aspect of childhood. So that would mean that there's a snag in the development of central nervous system that could happen in a certain way, a certain prescribed way. Yeah, that's what you're saying. Not at least one person does. It does run in the family, seemingly, or often times, stress and anxiety can be a big trigger. Sleep apnea, sleep deprivation, if you have migraines, thyroid hormones being produced too much, too much booze, two, six-year-olds, maybe if you're sleeping out at summer camp

or somewhere else you've never been. Yeah, apparently they have linked stress to it, like I guess some parents have noticed that if the kid has a particularly stressful day, they may be predisposed to having a night tear. Boy, stress on kids? That's just heartbreaking. Well, it's also been linked to basically all forms of abuse that leads to a higher risk of night tears.

And they have found that if a small percentage of kids who experience night tears might go on to have psychosis later in life. I saw that too, so I saw that that was widely reported. There was one study that found it, but it was a decent study, 6,700 kids. It's not bad. And it found that kids who have night tears are eight times likelier to experience psychosis later on in life, like you said. And they have found it can develop along with anxiety, bipolar disorder, and depression.

In adults, it can be comorbid with those. Correct. It's a different word. But it gets it across. It does. It's just, yeah, comorbid just sounds, you know. They should have come up with a different word. Like hygienic, cohygienic.

That's the word you hate, right? Yeah, morbid. I don't know. It's one of those words that means two completely different things. And why do that? Just have a different word. Well, let's come up with it right now. I don't.

Give me some letters. No. Okay. I think that was a wise decision. Yeah. They used to give you meds. Nowadays, they don't do that so much. That's so.

I saw that in this article, but I also saw elsewhere that they're like, nope, meds. Best thing to do. If your kid has horrible night tears, give them volume. Really? Yeah. Like basically benzodiazepines, which are things like volume. I think some antidepressants are benzodiazepines, but something that will just knock you out and you're not going to have a night there or any kind of interrupted sleep.

Yeah. Apparently, if it's bad enough, they will prescribe those. I'm sure it's not like they're go to like, here's give your kid these chemicals, pharmaceuticals. But I think it's still on the table. And I saw this report in a number of different places that there's a reported case of some kid who had 40 episodes of night tears in a single night. Wow. Yeah.

You would give that kid volume. Holy cow. Yeah. That poor kid. Yeah. Because think about it. Like even if the kid's not remembering what's going on, it's still having like the fight or flight effect 40 times in a single night on his little central nervous or central nervous

system. Yeah. It's not good. Man. So you'd be way better off just giving the kid volume then. Oh, for sure. One thing that they found is that a lot of times if you have to pee pee, that can bring on a night terror if your bladder is really full.

So what they do in that case is they recommend you wake your kid up a couple hours into sleep and go take the little boy or girl to the bathroom, put him back to sleep. And the thing that I saw about that though, I'm sure that that has something to do with it. But I also think that they are inadvertently following what's called scheduled awakening. Right. Which is the the go to treatment for night tears. Yeah.

I mean, it's exactly what it sounds like, which is you try and I mean, you have to time it out pretty well. Yeah. And you really are very predictable. Yeah. Like if your kid suffers from night tears on a regular basis, they're going to have them at about the same time every night. Yeah.

So you just wake your kid up like 10 minutes before then. Yeah. Like five seconds before that. Right. You wait, you wake them up just 10, 15 minutes, something like that before they normally have a night tear, give them some water or something like tuck them in a little bit, but you rouse them enough that you are preventing them from going into such deep sleep that they'll have a night tear.

So they kind of dip down towards sleep or toward that super deep sleep, but never so much that they experience a night tear, but they're still getting good sleep, better sleep because they're not experiencing the fight or flight response. Because I was wondering about that, about disrupting the sleep pattern, but yeah, that sounds like it's a win-win. Yeah. Allegedly, they're still getting great sleep. And I do want to mention too, with the bladder problem.

I've said this before on the show and it is my duty, as always, to say it again, I was a late bed wetter and I always like to say this on the show because kids out there that listen to this, if you're a late bed wetter, don't be ashamed. Nothing to be ashamed about. It happens. It's hereditary. I went the bed till I was 12-ish. Uh-huh.

12-ish meaning 19. No, it was about 12. That's fine. Um, it was, you know, a lot of anxiety for a little Chucky spending the night out and stuff. Totally can imagine. So, if you're listening out there and you're a late bed wetter, just hang in there. It'll stop and hopefully you have parents that are understanding and friends' parents

that are understanding. Yeah. That's a big one. That's nice, Chuck. Yeah. I'm not embarrassed anymore. I don't think you should be. I'll pee in front of anybody.

Yeah. Go to sleep right now and pee. I'll do it. And then, you know, we were talking about this scheduled awakenings. There are devices. Yeah. And I found one on a popular online retailer for 129 bucks and what it is, it's just a little thing that...

Is that the Lulee? Well, I wasn't going to say the name, but sure. Okay. It's probably Lully. Yeah, you're right. You're right. It vibrates the mattress at intervals to wake your kid up gently. Yeah.

Well, supposedly, it also learns when your kid has... So you program in when your kid normally has a nightcare. Right. Through an app, I believe. Yeah. And then it starts to pay attention and learn when your kid actually has them. And then, yeah, vibrates and it does the same thing as a scheduled awakening device. So you don't have to be bothered.

No. Just let the robot take care of your kid. I looked at the reviews, though, and it got 81% either four or five star ratings. Which means, you know, when it was something like this, that means it worked for them. How many ratings? I don't remember. I mean, several hundred, I think. Oh, that's not bad.

And then 11% at one star. And again, that just means it didn't work for them. Like when you read it, people are like, it was absolute garbage. It didn't work for my kid. Or some people are like, I would have given it five, but I thought the packaging it came in was dumb looking. Some people do that. Yeah.

Man. It's people the worst. Whether or not you're using a device or you're doing a scheduled awakening like flatliners, it's all about the timing. You've got to time it just right. Right or else point of no return. Two movie references. They're remaking flatliners, by the way, of course.

I saw that. For the new generation. Yep. Starring Juno. Oh, really? Yeah. Who else? I can't remember.

The key for Sutherland just signed on, but one of those deals where they bring him back is probably the old weirdo who sits under the desk. That's my guess. And I wanted to talk too about something I didn't know existed. Sheets that keep you cool at night. Apparently, sometimes they think it can be triggered by overheating and people have found success with these wonder sheets that I didn't know existed. So I looked them up.

They're sheets that keep you cooler. That's great. I think it's a sheet that's a giant fan. Well, it's two to three degrees cooler to the touch. Nice. Wicks moisture away, like our favorite undies, prevents absorption of heat from lights if your bed sits in the sun all day. Oh, yeah.

And you sleep during the day, I guess. Yeah, you're a little kid on the late shift. And three times more airflow. So you have to get some of those. Yeah, you do. Give it a shot. Nice. One of the other things I saw that they think might trigger it is Restless Leg Syndrome.

Oh, yeah. Supposedly there's a link with those two. The Jimmy Legs. Mm-hmm. That'll keep you up. So there's a story. Should we talk about this guy in Phoenix? I feel like we talked about him in the sleepwalking episode.

Oh, did we? Mm-hmm. Yeah, we talked about people killing in sleepwalking episodes like he's not the only one. Yeah, I know. Well, let's talk about him again. Okay. Should we talk about the latter for later? I'll bet we said the same thing in the sleepwalking episode.

Scott, his nickname is Save It. Scott, Save It For Later. Oh, man. Sorry. I shouldn't be joking. He's in prison. For murder. Yes.

He, this was in 1997. He stabbed his wife 44 times and then held her head under water in a pool, swimming pool. Yeah. What happened is this guy got up in the middle of the night, went out to fix his swimming pool with a hunting knife as a screwdriver. His wife wakes him up and that's why we said not to wake someone up because if someone's going to get violent during a sleep terror, it's because you were trying to wake them up.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, you're supposed to just gently guide them back to bed. Yeah, she did not. She apparently startled him. He stabbed her 44 times and then tried to drown her and his neighbor saw this, called the cops, and that was his defense, that it was a sleep terror, which, you know, can occur with sleepwalking and it didn't work. The defense, basically the prosecution said their marriage isn't some rosy thing like

he's said. Mm-hmm. They're Mormon and she was trying to kind of leave the church behind a little bit and he was upset about that. Mm-hmm. The kids, more kids, and she didn't. Defense said all that stuff was true, but not really that big of a deal, like it didn't lead him to snap and kill his wife.

Right. But that was his defense and it didn't work. He's now in prison for life with no parole. Man. Can you imagine, though, if he really was just totally sleepwalking, having a night terror? Sad for everyone. Yeah.

Especially her. I saw a BuzzFeed article actually called Can You Die from a Nightmare? And it was about this artist named Tobias Long, hung himself in New York. And it's strongly suspected by people who know him that he did it in the midst of a night terror. Wow. Killed himself? Yes, he hung himself.

So you'll see during research for sleep terror and night terror that it's harmless. And any website worth its salt that's saying this will have an asterisk or will say, but you can't actually die from it. People have fallen out of windows. People have hurt other family members because you can't have injurious episodes is what they're called of night terrors because you're sitting there flailing. You're like trying to fight something off. You're, again, moving around because remember this comes during Stage 3 and 4 of Deep Sleep

where your brain's off but your motor function can still work. So you can get up and walk around and feel fear and be fighting stuff off. But you're not having a nightmare, you're having a night terror. So you can harm yourself and others. So it isn't just a totally harmless thing. Right. Which is usually what they say. Yeah.

By the way, we're going to get emails because you said hung and not hanged. Yeah, he hanged himself out there. Thanks for that, Joe. All right. What's going on in the brain though specifically? They don't know what causes it but they know what's lighting up and it all kind of makes sense. Well, it's like I was saying like when you're in Stage 3 or 4, your executive function is

off but you can still experience emotions like fear and panic and you can still move around but you're not, you have delta brainwaves so you're not thinking, you're not dreaming, your body's just doing something really bizarre that it's not normally supposed to do. Yeah. So that's what a night terror is. What's going on basically is you can commit acts of violence because that's switched on but you don't have that inhibition switched on. That's switched off.

Right. So what they found is what is happening during a night terror is it's, it resembles exactly or mirrors. Is it mirrors or is that opposite? Mirror would be opposite. It resembles what happens when someone is violent when they're awake. Right. No inhibition going on.

Executive functioning. Off. Off. Yeah. It's a really weird dangerous thing. Luckily, it's mostly just in kids but apparently in adults it can be really bad. Yeah, I bet. Because you know adults can be muscular.

They know their way around a knife. They can be. A little kid, it's just like you just hold them in place by putting pressure on their forehead. They're little kids that are more muscular than me. I remember when I used to lifeguard, I'd see like, it's like a little 12 year old boy and like that kid is naturally cut like more than, like more than I would ever hope to be. I hate those kids.

Yeah. Lastly, there is an Indiegogo for an augmented reality app called Night Terrors that sounds pretty awesome. Oh yeah. It's an app on your phone and it takes over the flashlight on your phone. So you turn out all the lights in your house and you walk through looking at your house, the camera on your phone, that's how you're looking at your house. And it's lit by the flashlight and everything and all of a sudden like a monster will pop

up like out from around the hall. Your hall is just a really neat concept and apparently they're executing it very well. What is the whole point though to scare the bejesus out of yourself? Oh, okay. It's a horror game app. Gotcha. It's a horror game is just you walk around your house and it scares you to death. It's like Pokemon Go, but uh...

For creeps. Yeah. Although Pokemon Go is for creeps too. There you go. I didn't even know that it was until yesterday. It's pretty new. It's not that shameful. Given another weekend, it would have been shameful.

Right. That's it, huh? I got nothing else. Well, if you want to know more about Night Terrors, you can type those words in the search bar at howstuffworks.com. It's a search bar, it's time for Listener Mail. This is about the Gettysburg Address. Hey guys, thanks for the show.

Not only do y'all address cool and interesting topics in a meaningful way, the dynamic between the two of y'all adds a layer of enjoyment that can't be duplicated. Thank you. Perfect mix of seriousness and humor. Perfect. This guy's right up our alley. While I'm writing those, I'll listen to the pod. That said, however.

No, no, no. This is good. I listened to the podcast on Gettysburg Address and that you mentioned all students across the country pointlessly memorize this and other speeches and never really get what it's even about. I can tell you, I was one of those memorized passages, memorizing passages never ever helps anyone learn. Right.

In high school, we not only had to memorize Gettysburg Address, Gettysburg, but Mark Antony's speech, which is what I had to do, Macbeth's Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow soliloquy. And in the month of April every year, we had to memorize a poem of our choice of at least 10 lines for National Poetry Month. They did it all the time and you know how many of those things I remember now? Zero. Do you know how much I can tell you about the passages and their meaning?

Nothing. I couldn't even tell you what poems I decided to memorize, although I think one year I chose an EE Cummings poem because it was technically 10 lines, but maybe a total of 15 words. Yeah, Matt. He's doing it right. I like EE Cummings though, good choice. So I'm with y'all on how pointless this all is. Keep up the great work.

You have a fan for life and that is Matt from Richmond, Virginia. Matt Anderson. Thanks a lot, Matt. Much appreciated. We appreciate the support. You know what I remember from that age, or like ad jingles, like I feel like chicken ten night. Like chicken ten night.

Yeah. Chicken ten night. And you don't remember schooling, but you remember where's the beef. Yeah. And chicken ten night was good. I think I remember that. It was just a jar of sauce, but it was like a whole gimmick around it. Just add chicken and you can have chicken ten night.

So in other words, cook a meal entirely made of other ingredients and pour this stuff on it. And your family will finally love you. And they also had one called beef ten night. Pork ten night. I don't think they did. I'm sure those were planned, but they never did it. They're like, we just can't get the sauce right.

Who's ever created a good sauce for pork or beef? If you want to get in touch with me or Chuck, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com and as always join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands

give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.