Stuff You Should Know - How Sleep Paralysis Works, or The Worst Thing That Can Happen While You're Sleeping

Episode Date: October 25, 2016

For as long as people have been sleeping, about half of us have probably suffered from sleep paralysis. Thanks to an unusual fluke in the sleep cycle, the sufferer feels paralyzed and consumed by fear as something on their chest tries to kill them. 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.

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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry is over there. So, this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. Something large on my chest. It's the devil. It's the devil. Hey, Chuck, you okay?

What happened? You were just having what's known as sleep paralysis, buddy. Whoa. It was close to it. But my touch, my gentle touch, broke you out of it. That actually suits me. Yeah. I'm just kidding, people.

I was acting. That was stagecraft. Yeah. And we were, well, we weren't debating because I was wrong. But we were talking about whether or not we had done this yet. We have not.

Like I said, I was wrong. We've bitten around the edges of it so much that I could see how you were thinking. Yeah, I feel like if you pulled every little bit of sleep paralysis out of all the episodes where we've talked at it, talked at it. We talked at it, not about it. You go away sleep paralysis.

The most recent one was either Exploding Head or Night Terror. And we specifically stopped talking about sleep paralysis. So that we could save it for the actual episode. Yeah, those are always good ones. So finally here it is. Like we'll be on an interesting train of thought and say, no, no, no.

Stop, stop. Yeah, that's exactly what we did too. I remember the first time this came up was in Trans Magnetic Stimulation, the thinking cap one. Yeah, this has popped up a lot. Well, it's pretty interesting stuff. Agreed. And it's been around a while.

You know, the word nightmare, we use that to describe like bad dreams. It's actually incorrect usage. Oh yeah. It was originally intended specifically to describe sleep paralysis. Because night means night. Sure.

Then Mare or Mayor, M-A-E-R-E, that extra E in there really messes it up. But it's Old English. So I don't know if I pronounced it correctly or not. Neither is anyone else alive, so it doesn't matter. But that specifically means an incubus. And an incubus was a type of devil, like the one that was just sitting on your chest,

a male, a sex-crazed male demon. I didn't specify that. Who would, well, I'm just making assumptions here. Who would come to you while you were sleeping and sit on your chest and maybe kill you, try to kill you and you couldn't do anything about it. Yeah, I'm into the succubus and the incubus. Okay.

I'm open-minded. But that's exactly right. The incubus is the male version of the succubus or the old sex-crazed hag that sits on your chest. So this whole idea of this has been around for a very long time. It's steeped in the supernatural and we're only just now starting to figure out

what sleep paralysis is. And to me, it's even more interesting now that we understand it a little more. Yeah, I did not know the exact definition of incubus until this research. And now I hate that band even more. Do you? Yeah.

Sex-crazed male demons. I wonder if that's what they were going for when they were just like, that sounds cool. No, I'm sure they know. Yeah. Well, I'm hats off to them for realizing that. Yeah. You know, making a medieval era nod.

They might've just thought it sounded cool. Who knows? Who am I to judge? I'm thinking you're right. I clearly know nothing about good band names. That's not true. I thought you always come up with good band names. No.

I don't know if other people agree. They're good to me. Has someone been? No. Oh, okay. No, no one's dogged in for band names. Is someone been being on Facebook? No, no, no.

I should say about that. No, but my own band name is not, no, I like it, but. El Chippo? We're named after a gas station. Where? El Chippos are, I know in the South, like South Carolina and like, I've seen them in Savannah. Okay.

I think Coastal Southeast. I thought that was a coincidence. They're El Chippos. Oh, no, it is. It is a coincidence. It is, but people send me pictures of El Chippos gas stations, which I always delight in. So you're not named after a gas station?

No. Okay. Cause then we would be Exxon Mobile, cause that's a great band name. I got it, sure. Everybody loves Exxon. What have they ever done? Nothing.

All right, so the strict definition, I guess it's not strict, but the definition we're gonna give, and where did you get this article? This is good. Oh yeah, we better shout this out. This is straight out of the British Psychological Society's Journal.

I could tell it was British. It was, yeah, cause they say Wildston stuff like that. Yeah. Way off. But it was written by Julia Santamaro and Christopher C. French. And I believe they're both sleep paralysis experts. So I know for sure, Professor French is,

cause I also saw a video of him on Vimeo. Yeah. Just basically talking about this. And he had a sweater on that said expert. Pretty much. So sleep paralysis, how they define it, and I agree is it's a period of transient, consciously experienced paralysis,

either when going to sleep or waking up. And I think I was under the misguided notion that it was almost always in the transition of waking up. And it sounds like it's even more common when you're going into sleep. And that is the hypnagogic stage as opposed to the hypnopompic stage. Right, coming out of sleep.

Yeah. So I think, I don't know why I got that impression, but I think I was wrong. I had the same impression. Oh yeah? Yeah. Probably came from us, each other. Hopefully.

So have you ever had sleep paralysis? No, neither. But I did want to mention that I told you I had an exploding head syndrome experience after we did that show. Right. Like two or three nights later, it happened to me for the first time ever.

Yeah, I was worried about getting this last night. I was like, I don't want this. Well, that's a bad way to go about it. Yeah. Because I'll get it in your head. Yeah. We should say it's actually, like you said, it's kind of common, right?

Well, I mean, depends on who you ask. I've seen everywhere from a third to half of people that might experience this at least once. But I think as far as chronic, chronically, it's not nearly that common. No, it's something like. Do we have stats on that? Yeah, they're in here somewhere.

Something like 3% to 6% of the general population experience what's called isolated sleep paralysis. And that's if you don't have narcolepsy? Yeah, that was the big thing I didn't realize is that sleep paralysis is a major symptom of narcolepsy. Yeah, we should do our show. Yeah. That came up and I was like, well,

let's just replace sleep paralysis as the show we got to do. Yeah, I had a great Aunt Laura from Mississippi that had narcolepsy. No, really? Yeah, and I didn't get to see her a lot in life. This was my father's mother's sister. But I remember very specifically, my brother and I going like one time to Jackson, Mississippi,

or Tupelo, I think, where she lived when I was like 12. And she would do that. She would nod off while talking to us and wake back up and finish her sentence. So it was like she wasn't even aware that she'd donned it off? No. And of course, I thought it was funny at the time.

I was a little kid, but I'm sure there's a lot more to it than that. Sure. It can probably be quite dangerous. I imagine so. I would guess it's kind of hard to come by a driver's license if you are diagnosed with narcolepsy. I don't think Aunt Laura drove.

Yeah. She was one of those that probably wouldn't have driven anyway. Oh, gotcha. She's like a Strickland type. Yeah, you know. I don't want to drive. Come pick me up.

She was just like we had to take the keys for my grandmother, that kind of thing. When she was drinking? No, when she was got to an age where she could drive safely. Yeah. We were like, grandma, you can't drive anymore. You know, in Japan, they have these very prominent magnets or stickers that you put on a car.

One's like a triangle. I can't remember what the other one is, but. Maybe on board? One means kind of, but no, not at all. Right. One means this is a new driver, like usually a teen driver, so everybody's steer clear. And then the other means this is a very elderly driver,

so everybody's steer clear. I would love one of those in my car. I don't understand why this isn't universal, you know? It makes perfect sense. I would like one just to keep people away from me. Just to leave you alone? Yeah, like back off. You put on like, what was the guy's name from Phantasm?

I don't know. Angus something? Yeah. You put on a little wig like his, a little skull cap while you're driving, just to really drive it home. That was an accidental pun just now. I didn't even catch it. I said, you put it on while you're driving just to drive it home,

to drive the point home. Yeah, and I made a really good accidental pun when we were talking about hunting. I said, my dad didn't hunt. I said, it's not like he was trying to take a stand. Or he wasn't trying to take a stand as in a deer stand. Totally messed up.

All right, so the deal with sleep paralysis is how you know that you're experiencing it is you can open your eyes. You're conscious, but you are aware that you can't move. You can't move your body. I mean, it kind of varies between severity and individual experience. But the common thing is that you can't move.

You feel paralyzed. Sometimes you can't even make a noise. It's that bad. And the problem with not being able to make a noise is that it particularly sucks in instances like this because you want to scream. Because most of the time when you are experiencing sleep paralysis, you are in the grips of terror

like you wouldn't ever normally experience. You are scared out of your mind. You have an impending sense of death. And you have all sorts of hallucinations. Basically, every sense could conceivably hallucinate, right? You have auditory hallucinations where you hear something in the room with you. I should say there's also a sense of presence, I guess.

Of another thing? Yeah, there's something in the room. Usually it's something that means you harm. So you sense its presence. You might also hear it. You probably also see it. And it can be anything from that succubus or incubus sitting on your chest.

Or both, if things are getting a little kinky. Right, you're both here. I didn't think you'd find out about each other. And you're like, well, let me wake my wife. But I can't move. Right, so you just sit there laying like, this is getting weird. She's going to be so mad.

And then you can smell them. You can taste them. There's something called gustatory hallucinations. And then also the sense of feeling, like moving and of pressure on your chest. Like you feel all this stuff. Like you're experiencing it. Yeah, and I think pressure is one of the big ones.

Like someone sitting on you and not allowing you to move. So our own Robert Lam wrote an article about this on our site too. Not about the full thing, but about why is it, why are they demons usually? And that was kind of one of my questions. So why is it usually a malevolent spirit? And why isn't it, whatever, some fantasy?

Right, like A-Rod saying like, hey, you want to go play catch or something like that. That would be yours? No, no, no. OK. Isn't he like the most hated man on the planet now for some reason? Oh, I mean, he kind of went his end of his career.

He was not very well liked. Why? What'd he do? I didn't pick up on it. He did a lot of steroids and lied about it for years. Oh, oh, gotcha. Yeah, gotcha. He was like a repeat offender that consistently was like,

I'm not doing steroids. I see. I don't know why all these drug testers are saying I did. They're like, you have a syringe in your arm. Robert said, and he didn't make this up, but his research indicated that someone's beliefs going into it might conjure up these negative connotations. And when the experience itself is

marked by a pulse rate increase in labored breathing sometimes, it doesn't lend itself to a good experience. Right, right. Because so Professor French concurs with Robert. He was saying the fear being usually a hallmark of the sleep paralysis experience is not just you're afraid because you can't move and there's something in the room with you.

That's part of it. But he's saying your amygdala is also hyperactive right then. So you're experiencing fear on like its own terms. It's like its own freestanding symptom that even if it was lucky the leprechaun, you'd still be super afraid that he was in the room with you kind of thing. Because that region of your brain that's delivering

these jolts of fear to you is working over time. Then it becomes that bad leprechaun movie. Yeah, yeah. The one Jennifer Aniston. Oh, was she in that? Yeah. Yeah, I never saw those. I never did either.

Well, it had also said speaking of movies that like your own like what kind of pop culture you're into. Like all this stuff can play into it because they are, it's sort of like an extension of a dream. So if it's agitated by like labor breathing and rapid pulse rate and a nightmare, then it's not going to be A-Rod floating in onto your chest with a baseball.

Unless you're super scared of him, then it might be. So let's take a break, man, and then we'll come back and talk about some of the cultural interpretations of what the heck's going on here, OK? Sounds good. 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 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 nonstop 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. 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, OK, 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. 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 Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Oh, this love, you should know.

So Chuck, remember, we were talking about, like, how Nightmare is, like, an old English term for sleep paralysis? Yeah. It's been around for a while. And there's, basically, it seems to be universal. Yeah. And so since it's interpreted by the person based on, like, what their culture believes in,

there have been, like, different interpretations of sleep paralysis throughout history and cultures around the world. And they're pretty interesting. Yeah, and most of them, the common thread here is that, and even in modern terms, they're described this way sometimes, but definitely in the olden days, there's almost always some sort of supernatural thing,

like a witch, or a Newfoundland. Yeah. They called it the old hag, which is creepy, just hearing that. And China, the ghost oppression, because apparently the Chinese believe that you're very vulnerable, your soul is, when you're asleep. So I think that's sort of the common thread

here in all these countries. There is a, I took an anthropology class, and I can't remember what it was talking about in general. But one of the things that seemed to pop up around the world was something called spirit intrusion. Like, when you were sleeping, your spirit got up and walked around. And if, like, the tether between your spirit

and your body was severed, you were, like, anybody could come and possess you. Wow. And it was a big, like, that was a big explanation for mental illness in cultures around the world. So I thought that was interesting that that was also an explanation for sleep paralysis, too. Yeah, I think it kind of depends on whatever the leading

ghoul is in your country and region, because in Europe, of course, in the 1500s through the 1700s, it's going to be witches. You were witch-ridden. That was at one of the witch trials in 1747. This woman testified about her husband in bed. And he said he was laying there stiff, barely drawing breath. And he woke up and he said, my Lord, Jesus, help me.

Oh, fiery witches took me to Maramaros. And they put 600 weight of salt on me, which we're laughing at. But if you break it down, that has all the hallmarks of all the different hallucinations, whether it's traveling or the weight on your chest or all these tactile hallucinations wrapped up into one nightmare.

Sure, with exclamation points. Yeah, there were weren't there. And I thought this is pretty interesting. In St. Lucia, the Caribbean island, they have a term called kocma. And they think that it's little unbaptized babies who are haunting the area that are causing sleep paralysis or doing all sorts of horrible things to you

while you're sleeping. But you're not sleeping. I want to restate this again, because that's a little confusing. Yeah, when you're experiencing sleep paralysis, you're laying there and your eyes are open and you know that something's in the room with you. Maybe it comes over and climbs on your chest.

When it does, you can feel its breath in your face. You can smell and taste its rank breath. You can feel the pressure of it laying on your chest. It's staring you in the eyes. And you cannot move. Not only can you not move, you can't make a sound as much as you're trying to scream your head off, because you are scared out of your mind.

And this experience can last from a few seconds to, I've seen up to 10 minutes. And from anecdotally, each second of those 10 minutes feels like a decade, because you're just so scared and it's just going on and on and on. So it makes total sense that you would say, there was a spirit in my room last night. Yeah, because if not, you think I'm losing my mind.

So let's blame it on. I mean, we'll get into some of the other reasons. But blame it on something else. Right, like in Japan, Kana Shibari is now, they believe that it's evil spirits messing with you. Same thing in Korea with Hawi Nulita. Hawi Nulita. Nice, yeah.

I thought that was pretty good pronunciation. And like we said though, these are all sort of versions of the same thing, no matter where you go, which I always find interesting. Like these sort of universal regional things. And then most recently though, and this is where I think we first came into sleep paralysis with the transcranial magnetic stimulation episode,

was that it's to blame for basically every UFO abduction account. Oh yeah, was that where we talked about it? For sure. They have done studies and they found that if you, I think if you believe in alien abductions, that's part of your belief system, then you're more, or did they do the study of people

that experienced sleep paralysis and all of them believed maybe in UFOs? I think they did the reverse. The reverse. People who report having been abducted by UFOs. They experienced sleep paralysis. Yes. They have a higher frequency of experiencing sleep paralysis.

Gotcha. So the people study this and they just fold their arms and go, OK. Right, yeah, it was an alien. But apparently in the UFO lore, sleep paralysis has been accounted for. So when you're abducted, you remember being paralyzed before and after, but they wipe your memory

of the actual abduction out. But they leave the sleep paralysis. And I remember in ex files, I think when Fox Mulder's sister was taken, she was levitated off the bed and just stiff as a board floats out the window. That's classic sleep paralysis symptoms, where you can't move and yet you still feel like you're floating

and you're moving, you're levitating, or that there's 600 weight of salt being put on your chest. I love salt, so that might not be a bad thing. You'd be like, this is delicious and terrifying. Just inch it up toward my tongue. That'd be the part that was making you crazy. Yeah, I couldn't get to it. They say it usually occurs when you are lying on your back

in bed, although it can occur in any position at all. Because one of the accounts, this article is cool, because they have firsthand accounts. One of the guys was laying on his stomach, and he felt the demon, the incubus, I think, on his back. Or maybe it was the succubus, I'm not sure. And you can break it. Sometimes it happens on its own.

Sometimes you can break it on your own on purpose. They recommend, and this is a good idea, I think, they recommend to try and, instead of saying, I've got to get up and run out of here, they say to try to just blink or lift your little finger, or just any conscious movement that you can get can break that thing. Yeah, and apparently the moment you do that,

the spell is broken, is how it's been put forever. Herman Melville was the first, I think, to write about this. And Moby Dick Ishmael recounts sleep paralysis. That book again? Yeah. And then, I think, 25 or 50 years later, the first time it shows up in the medical literature,

Silas Weir Mitchell, who we know from the Exploding Head Syndrome, he also described that for the first time, too. This guy was knocking out the Paris Omnias left and right. But they both used this terminology that the spell is broken. All it takes is just the slightest stir, and the sleep paralysis is over with. But the problem is, you can't move.

You can't make a sound. They said to even try to just clear your throat. Yeah. But even that can be challenging. But supposedly, if you can even get just a little bit going, you wake yourself up a little bit, and then you can do it a little more and more and more, and then all of a sudden you're screaming,

and you've woken yourself up. Or if you can make a sound or a signal or something to get your partner help you something, to notice that you are in the midst of sleep paralysis, all they have to do is just touch you, and it brings you back to reality or this reality. Yeah, and it's not one of those things where it's dangerous to wake someone up experiencing sleep

paralysis, right? Isn't it totally fine? Yeah, that's the other thing about it. As terrifying and horrifying and just what a horrible experience it is, physiologically, it's harmless. Aside from raising your blood pressure. Yeah, I mean, I guess you could always trigger a cardiac arrest or something, maybe, but.

Right, well, supposedly it mimics having a heart attack. Oh, that's fun. In some ways. So you actually could be having a heart attack and think it was sleep paralysis. Or I think it also mimics epilepsy in some ways. Right, just diagnosed. But if it is just actual sleep paralysis, it's harmless.

Well, yeah, and I know we did mention this. It might have been the trans-magnetic, transcranial magnetic simulation, where they recommend one of the things is to just tell, or it might have been night terrors, tell people just to learn to embrace it and go with it. And then it doesn't, because sometimes it can be a joyful experience.

It's not always terror. Yeah. And maybe if you roll with it, you can control it a little bit more. It was exploding head syndrome. Is that it? Just learning that it's actually harmless. Yeah, same thing.

Like let people, some people just got over it immediately. Right. And then other people, yeah, with this, have learned to actually enjoy the feeling of levitating or floating. I would. And it all comes down to hearing that it's harmless. And hearing that it's harmless relieves stress.

And stress is actually what brings both of those things on. So they're related in some way. And we'll get down to the scientific nitty-gritty after this break, huh? Yeah. Chuck. Yes, sir? If you're trying to eat better.

On the podcast, Paydude, 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 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 nonstop 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. 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. OK, 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. 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, ya 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, dude, what's really going on here? Old hags aside. Well, I guess we should talk about narcolepsy a little bit, because this is one of the, I guess, side effects of narcolepsy. There are actually a couple of them, sleep paralysis, and then what's called vivid hypnagogic hallucinations,

which is when you're falling asleep, like we talked about. And apparently, if you're narcoleptic, about 17% to 40% of narcoleptic are people who have narcolepsy. Is it wrong to say narcoleptic? Probably. Probably. I think with any condition or disease. Don't identify the person who has the disease.

Right, it's somebody with it. That's right. So somebody with narcolepsy. Nice. And I want to hear from you people, by the way. Some people who have narcolepsy will be like, yeah, I'm an narcoleptic. I don't care.

And other people will say kudos for saying people with narcolepsy. 17% to 40% experience sleep paralysis if you are stricken with narcolepsy. 20% to 40% experience those vivid hypnagogic hallucinations. And it pretty much is individual as far as how much you're going to have these and how much you experience it, whether you have narcolepsy or not. But if you are non-narcoleptic in that population,

which is most people, 20% to 60% of those folks apparently will experience it at least one. Right. It's a pretty wide range. Some people experience it very frequently. And apparently, if you have basically chronic, yeah, I think it's called severe and chronic sleep paralysis. So severe is where it happens like multiple times in a night.

And then chronic is where that happens over a period of six months. If you're one of those poor SOBs who has chronic severe sleep paralysis, this can happen to you like up to 12 times or more in a night. Yeah, because when you go back to sleep, it'll happen all over again. Right, yeah.

So that was one of the things, if you're moving a finger, blinking an eye, or making a sound, and you wake yourself up, you want to actually get out of bed and get up and move around to basically shake it off. Yeah. Because if you don't, you can fall back asleep. And the same thing is going to happen again and again. Then even more mind-boggling is this.

One of the other traits of sleep paralysis are what are called false awakenings, right? Right. Which is some straight up inception stuff. Yeah, where you think you're awake and screaming, but you're not. Right. Then you wake up and realize, oh, I was dreaming

that I was awake and experiencing sleep paralysis. So. It's a bit of a mind bender. It is, including that these false awakenings, according to Professor French in that video, can be several layers deep. Yeah. So when you have a bout of sleep paralysis,

and you finally scream and wake up, you realize, oh, I was dreaming, right? You might experience it again. Right. And then you do the same thing. And you go through this multiple times until you finally actually do wake up. But you can go through sleep paralysis over and over again

in different layers of a dream. Yeah. And then you get up and you go to work at your stupid cubicle and no one around you has any idea of the living hell that you're experiencing. Right. Or just the amazing journey you've just been on with A-Rod. One thing that really stinks is if, you know,

to combat it, like you said, to get up and fully wake yourself up, that could screw you. If you'd have a hard time falling back asleep, you might be up for the night. Right. And this one person in here described the feedback loop of stress. A lot of times, stress is what brings it on.

And then it becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy that you're stressed out about what's going to happen, which makes it happen. And you're just thinking, oh, no, no, not again, not again, not again. And of course, that's when it happens. Right, right, right. So the stress is messing up your sleep pattern.

And that's where the whole thing comes from, right? So the first two guys who were described in the medical literature by Silas, we're Mitchell, is having sleep paralysis. We're actually healthy. But it was people with narcolepsy who ultimately led to basically the solving of the mystery of what sleep paralysis is.

And one of the characteristics of narcolepsy is something called sleep onset REM periods. Yeah, they think that may be the key there. I think it's the key. Yeah, so what that is, you know, we've talked a lot about REM sleep. That usually happens about an hour or at least an hour or more after you've fallen asleep.

And what's happening here is SORMP, can we call it that? Yes. Sleep onset REM periods is when you're experiencing this REM before that hour or so has passed, like right as you're falling asleep. You go straight into that REM sleep. So like I think in my own private Idaho, either Keanu Reeves or River Phoenix

when they like fell asleep. Yeah, one of those said narcolepsy, right? Yeah, one of them. I think so. Like their eyes kind of fluttered. I think it was river. OK, so like that was a perfect portrayal of narcolepsy because your eyes would flutter during REM sleep.

And it would happen immediately if you had sudden onset REM periods, right? Right. So the idea that somebody can fall asleep and immediately go into REM sleep rather than go through the sleep cycles and stages like you're supposed to, that apparently is what accounts for or is associated very strongly with episodes of sleep paralysis.

With people with narcolepsy. With people who have SORMPs because you don't have to have narcolepsy to have sleep onset REM periods. It's a trait of narcolepsy. But even people who don't have narcolepsy can experience that. And usually it's when you're very stressed and your sleep pattern is out of whack.

Yeah, I think what I was trying to say was that doesn't explain when you have a sleep paralysis episode coming out of sleep. Right. Which is the hypno-pumpic. Right. But I think it was probably, who is it? Dr. French?

French. Professor French? Uh-huh. Mr. French? In the conservatory with the candlestick. Professor French, I think, reasons that it doesn't fully explain it, but it could relate because it's a similar state of consciousness

either way. Right. Falling sleep or waking up. Yeah. So basically exiting or entering REM sleep suddenly into this reality can be attended by an episode of sleep paralysis. Yeah, and they did some studies in Japan

and they actually elicited that sorenth. These are mean. Yeah. Don't you think? I don't know how they would do that, but they elicited sorenth in participants and they used sleep interruption and 9.4% of the ones induced had an episode of sleep paralysis.

Yeah, but that was going into sleep. Correct. They've not figured out how to, like you said, create it and bringing somebody out of REM sleep. But again, it's associated with it. Yeah. What they think is going on is basically this. When you suddenly go into REM sleep from waking life,

your brain can get caught in this dual state of consciousness where your brain is consciously awake, but it's also in the exact same state it's in when you're dreaming, which your dreams take place in REM sleep. So you're in two states of consciousness at once. That's amazing to me. Yeah. That's sleep paralysis.

And the paralysis is explained by the fact that another hallmark of REM sleep is that you can't move. Your muscles are paralyzed. It's cataplexy, right? So that you don't act out your dreams. So you're dreaming while you're awake. That's sleep paralysis. Yeah, as Dr. French says, wakefulness has occurred,

but the body and part of the brain are still in REM sleep. Nuts. It is. I want to have one of these. Yeah, but it sounds so scary. I mean, terror, panic. These are the words that are used for it.

I know. I want to have one. And I'm not taking it lightly for people that suffer from it. I know it can be awful. But I would like to, like the exploding head thing, like now I know what that feels like. Yeah. And I kind of like having these references in life.

OK. Like personal references, you know? Sure. I remember we did the slinky episode. You went out and bought a slinky. That's not true. So like we said, how you can break it is by trying to move small things, clear your throat, maybe. Aside from that, you can try and avoid it all together

by, if you're able to, have a really regular sleep schedule and stuff like that. But if you're, they make a good point. If you're traveling, if you're in different time zones, if you have to work the night shift. You have a kid? Yeah, exactly. Waking up all night, you might kind of be, you know,

at the mercy of the sleep paralysis gods. Yeah, I was glad that they put that in, that realism. Because so many times, whenever you're talking about a sleep disorder, it's like the CDC recommends eating an apple a day. And it's just like, this is not helpful. Like this isn't real. But this guy's like, yeah, you're in trouble

when your sleep's all jacked up and you have sleep paralysis a lot. Yeah. What else is there? Oh, with narcolepsy in particular. And I mean, there are drugs that you can take, but they don't necessarily work with sleep paralysis. With narcolepsy, sodium oxibate is prescribed.

And I look that up as GHB. Yeah, but that's just for narcolepsy, not for sleep paralysis. Right. With the idea that if you carry the narcolepsy, then you won't have the sleep paralysis. That, I think, is how you could cure it. But that's only if you have narcolepsy.

Right. Not isolated sleep paralysis. I think the official recommendation, aside from all the little tricks that we mentioned, is, like we said, hey, it's not going to hurt you. Try and reframe how this is in your brain. And don't be afraid of it. Welcome to Incubus.

What if the banned Incubus was what showed up in your room while you had sleep paralysis? Well, I don't want that. Yeah. You know, another way to treat this is for everybody to be nice to everybody else and cut down on everyone's stress. You never know who has sleep paralysis.

They might think they're being abducted by UFOs and aimlessly probed every night and are too freaked out to even mention it, which is another thing that Professor French points out. Like, we need to let people know about this, because the more people we know that this is actually harmless and fairly common, the less stress they're going to be about it when they go to bed.

So go out there, you tell somebody about sleep paralysis, and then also be nice to everyone you meet. Yeah, I posted a, there's a documentary about it. Can't remember the name right now, but I posted this documentary trailer quite a while ago. It's on Netflix. Yeah. Can't remember what it's called,

but I know what you're talking about. Like the dream? Maybe, something like that. It's got a pillow. But I posted on Facebook a while ago, and a lot of people chimed in that had bouts of sleep paralysis. Yeah, yeah, apparently it's very common.

Yeah, I went and looked through the comments today. It was pretty interesting stuff. And my heart goes out to everybody. Same here. And hopefully you've learned just to sort of live with it, be a dream sailor. You live with it. And ride it out.

That would be kind of cool though. So it'd be like levitation on. Yeah, control it. Incubus out, succubus in. You got anything else? No. If you want to learn more about sleep paralysis, well, just type those words in the search bar.

So we have a very limited amount here on how stuff works. So after you read Robert Lam's great thing, go check out stuff on the internet, okay? Okay. And since I said whatever I just said, it's time for listening to the mail. Thank you. Hey guys, I've been a fan for years.

It was introduced to you on a 24 hour road trip with my best friend when I picked him up from the Naval base and delivered him home, spent the weekend with his family. By the time we were halfway home, I'd been awake for almost 30 hours. We still had six to go. My friend put on the latest episode of Stuff You Should Know.

And we reveled in the gloriousness all the way there. Anyway, I wanted to write and say thank you for saving my butt. I am a neuropsychology major studying in Melbourne, Australia. I was feeling very, very unprepared for an exam, but was reassured by mother that my knowledge base was much wider than what I was taught in class. Thanks entirely to my beloved and all reference Stuff You Should Know.

I laughed at the time, but did a little merry jig at my desk when I opened my paper to find questions and answers that I knew thanks to you guys. So thank you. And boy, he put seven exclamation points there. Ooh, that translates into money in some parts of the world, you know. Upon learning that I pass with fine colors with a U,

my mother bought me a card on the front reads, I want to listen to all the podcasts you do. For a moment, I thought that maybe I talk about you guys too much, but promptly dismissed the idea. So thanks for the show, for the awesome podcast, four exclamation points, from one academic to several others, three exclamation points.

Oh, there's a certain dwindle. Many, many thanks. That is from Teagan. Thanks, Teagan. Who describes herself, I guess, Teagan's a lady's name, right? Sure. As a nerdy neuropsych major from Melbourne.

Thanks a lot, Teagan. We appreciate that big time. And all the exclamation points, those were very nice. Got a little lazy toward the end, but. Right, that's right. I'm trying to trail off. Maybe she broke the key. Maybe she has narcolepsy.

Good point. If you want to get in touch with us like Teagan, you can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.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.

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