Stuff You Should Know - What is exploding head syndrome?

Episode Date: July 28, 2016

Exploding head syndrome isn't nearly as weird as it sounds, and there are no brain parts being damaged. But if you suffer from it, you will definitely be freaked out. The good news is, despite its name, it's not dangerous at all. 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.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Jerome Rowland over there.

And this is Stuff You Should Know. For a second there, I thought you said Jerry the Drone, Rowland, and I was like, what a weird nickname. Yeah, Jerry talks like this. Oh, it's in droning. I was thinking she was like a remote control plane with a camera attached. No, that's not what I meant.

Or that she was bombing women and children. No, not that either. I didn't even say that. I said Jerry Jerome. Yeah, yeah, I get it. Okay, you feeling all right today? Yes, you? How's your sleep?

You know, dude, I have all but stopped drinking lately. Oh yeah? Lately. Okay. And so I'm sleeping like a champ. Yeah, and waking up like a champ too, I imagine, right? Makes a big difference. Huge, especially at our age.

Yeah, I've only had the alcohol once in the past two weeks. Wow. And I'm sleeping so good, I'm kind of like, I mean, I'm not quitting drinking. Let's be honest. I mean, it doesn't sound like you need to. No, but it's just one day became two, became three, and I was sleeping like a champ.

And this is after a couple of nights of bad sleep due to too much booze. Yeah. So I'm like, man, that's kind of nice. Yeah, you're like, oh yeah, life is enjoyable, I forgot. Yeah. So anyway. I think it's super healthy to,

and you and I have talked about this before, I think it's super healthy to do at least a month out of the year, straight through, where you're just like, I'm not having a drop. Oh yeah, yeah. You know, this is good for you. Yeah, I had a couple of years ago, I went exactly one month without a single drink,

and I still ate like crap, did not exercise, and I dropped like 13 pounds. Oh yeah. Just for not consuming alcohol. From beer? No, I don't drink much beer. That's right. But I mean, you know, gin and tonic,

that's a ton of calories. Yeah, I drink diet tonic when I have a gin and tonic. Yeah, you get used to it. And there's good diet tonic out there. Like you just have to treat yourself. I guess so. I've never, diet tonic really tastes gross. Like the swill that they have

in like the little leader bottles that's diet. That's, well, what's good? Like the handmade brands? Fever, fever tree? Yeah, like the crafted stuff. Okay. Like artisan tonic. Yeah, tonic for rich people.

Yeah, tonic made by a guy whose mustache is waxed. Well, I'll have to try that then. I think you should. And yeah, it is expensive, but just don't, don't drink eight gin and tonics. Yeah. You know, or gins and tonic. What would William Sapphire say?

Gins and tonics. Probably. I told Emily the other day, I was like, I wish she could drink into your mouth and taste it and have a nice little effect afterward and have it just leak out a tube in the side of your body. I think that's called like a stoma. So you don't get the calories or the, you know,

the lingering effects. Yeah. And she said, yeah, it's probably good that you're not drinking. You're like, no, really, let's flush this out. Yeah. There's gotta be a way to do it. So anyway, long way of saying I'm sleeping great.

I'm glad. I'm glad. Have you ever been falling asleep and right as you were about to enter the land of slumber? Sure. Got your saw out, putting it to a log. You haven't started song yet, but you're about to. And then all of a sudden, boom.

You sit bold upright. You're like, what, what was that? I don't think so. I can tell you for a fact that's never happened to me. Yeah. I mean, I'm pretty sure it's never happened to me, but unless I'm misremembering. I just don't see how you could forget something like this. It seems pretty significant.

You know what I mean? No, I agree. So we're talking about exploding head syndrome, which before we started recording, you were angry, you weren't angry. I'm always angry. So not true. You were-

No, it is. I need help. You were picking at the name of the syndrome, because it's very- Overblown? Yeah. To say the least, exploding head syndrome. What'd you say it should have been called? Crazy Sleepy Sound Syndrome?

Sleepy Head Loud Noise thing or something. Or what? Head syndrome. Or I'm trying to sleep without work in the morning syndrome. Stupid brain. I could do this for an hour. Maybe we should. Okay. Release it as a blooper reel.

So exploding head syndrome is a nighttime hallucination. Also, you can classify it as a perisomnia. Yeah. Did we do one specifically on sleep paralysis or just talk about it a lot? No, and buddy, it deserves its own. I can't believe we haven't done it yet. I know we talked a lot about it in sleepwalking.

Sleepwalking and- Trans cranial magnetic simulation. Yeah, I think we did one on sleep, period, too, didn't we? Or did we? I think so. It's hard to recall. Yeah, but for the most part, we have skirted around it. And I think we should continue to,

because I think it definitely deserves its own episode. So we should continue to skirt around it? Yeah, by not doing it. No, no, no. I mean, in this episode. Oh, oh, oh, sure. You know what I mean? Yeah.

I think it deserves its own freestanding standalone, vertically integrated episode. Gotcha. Called, what's the deal with sleep paralysis? You got it. So this is a nighttime hallucination or a perisomnia, like I said, of which sleep paralysis is as well. That's all I'm gonna say.

Don't give it away. And here's the deal. Like you described, you're either already asleep, or I think a little more typically falling asleep. Yeah. And you hear a loud, loud booming sound, like a gun or an explosion. Symbols crashing.

That's a good one. Something that catches your attention. What else? Falling down the steps. A big person carrying a drum set falling down the steps. All right. One of those one-man bands falling down some stairs. Totally.

Which everybody wants to see. Even if you don't have like a meme bone in your body, you still kind of want to see something like that. Just for the... Yeah, just to see how it sounds. That was crazy. Yeah. It might play a little tune, you never know.

On the way down. Yackety sacks. Right. So it's a genuine disorder. And I did a little Facebook survey. Yeah, hands off to you, man. You're basically a citizen scientist now. Were the respondents all weird?

No. Were they weird? Stuff you should know followers. So they're... Weird. I don't know what you mean. The acronym weird. Right.

Well, I meant it both ways. Okay. They were neither. No, we have like a very wide demographic. It's great. Yeah, it is good. And basically I just said, has anyone ever been afflicted with exploding head syndrome?

Then I explained it because a lot of people as we'll find like responded with, oh my God, that's a thing. Yes, I have it. That's really cool. That showed up in one of the articles that we researched. Yeah, and I got about 150, by the time I cut it off, respondents that said yes. And about, huh?

You got 150 yes responses to whether or not... 150 total responses, including like comments on responses. And I would guess probably 100 of those were affirmatives. That's amazing. And about 70% of those are women. Did you notice how much reach that post got? Can you figure out like roughly what percentage of people who saw that responded?

Well, we could, but I did not take the time. Okay. This is still, it's an amazing response. Yeah, I mean, I've got a lot of... Well, it really wasn't that hard. But I think it's neat. It shows a lot of initiative. It is neat.

I got a lot of responses. Meredith said it used to happen a lot, but now not so much. That's even worse when the baby is sleeping. Interesting. Oh, because she's worried that the baby's fallen out of the bed. Caitlin, it happened only once. Yes, I have it frequently from Melissa. Man, this is so bizarre.

Lauren said I tried to explain it to my family and they thought I was crazy. It's more of a distant exploding noise for me though. It doesn't startle. So that may not be it. And a few of these at me. That might be the mining operation of the edge of the county. Sue, yes, it sounds like a gunshot.

No pain or anything like that, but it is startling. Most people in here crack of a baseball bat hitting a ball. Wow. From Christiane. Yeah, you're right. They are mostly women, huh? Yeah, I mean, there's dudes in here too. I'm just not reading those.

Here's a guy, Adam, not exactly. Jonathan, yes, I live near a train. All right, guys, let's... Jeffrey, yes, I have it. I thought there was something seriously wrong with me, but then I heard the term on a radio story and I realized what was happening. It's a huge relief.

So what all these people are saying, and this is astounding, right? Like what you're reading directly reflects what we found in our research for this article, right? That has been published here, there, very scattershot in medical journals. And look for Chuck's study, by the way, in the Lancet this fall, that this is the pattern,

this is the description or the experience of exploding head syndrome. Yeah, no pain. No. Nothing more than an inconvenience, really, other than I guess I could trigger a heart attack. Yeah, and that's one of the associated symptoms. So you're falling asleep, you're almost about to sleep.

Suddenly there's a very loud, sharp noise. Yeah, in your head. But it's just in your head, but it wakes you, arouses you, very suddenly, and usually scares the bejesus out of you, so tachycardia, or very fast or irregular heartbeat, is one of the reported symptoms of exploding head syndrome. Yeah, they can go on a bunch of nights in a row.

It can be very sporadic. It can happen once. Yeah, once it never happened again. Yeah, one of those, yeah, it's just amazing. Yeah, and it's unusual that a few people said it happened even as a kid, because it seems like it does not happen that often with children. No, but it can.

One reported, at least one reported case of a 10-year-old, but apparently it mostly seems to onset in the 50s, the person's 50s, and that women tend to be at a higher risk for it, as your findings suggest. Yeah, and I did not, I didn't like be a creep in trying to determine how old these people were. Oh, okay. But like, oh, this dude looks like he's 40-ish.

This lady's gotta be 60. Gotcha. Just left that one alone, you know? I thought you were gonna say like, you weren't gonna be a creep by being like, you smell nice to like every response. This guy, I can't tell, because he just has an avatar of a Mortal Kombat character.

Yeah, which means he's like 40. Ouch. Should we take a break? Yeah. All right, let's do it. Yummy. Yummy. On the podcast, Heydude The 90s called

David悲sher and Christine Taylor, stars of the co-classic show Heydude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna 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 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, 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 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. Oh, 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, where does all this come from, sir? Comes from your head. Where was this first described, sir? Oh, back in the, I think, 1870s.

Yeah, 1876. There's a guy for standby for the most 1870s name you'll hear today, Silas Weir Mitchell. Yeah. And he was a physician who apparently was a magnet for exploding head syndrome. Oh, really? Well, he described several cases among his patients.

Yeah. And he was, as far as anyone knows, the first in the medical literature to describe exploding head syndrome. He didn't call it that, though. He called them sensory discharges. But what he described is clearly what we now understand is exploding head syndrome.

Yeah, he had one patient called Mr. V. That's who he called it. It, him. Right, the guy's real name was Mr. V, spelled V-E-E. But he abbreviated it as Mr. V. He said he experienced a, quote, sense of a pistol shot or a blow in the head, end quote. Man.

And he complained of a noise in my head, which is sometimes like the sound of a bell, which has been struck once. Or else I hear a loud noise, which is most like that of a guitar string, rudely struck, which breaks with a twang. And I presume he did not live above a folk singing cafe. Oh, man.

You know what you do when you live above one of those? You move. Yeah. So, like you said, Silas went on to say it's a snapping of the brain, then a little bit later. And, well, not a little bit. 1988, that's a lot of it. Neurologist from the UK named John M.S. Pierce

of the whole Royal Infirmary. Man, that is super British. And in the Lancet, one of the great medical journals, he is the one, I believe, that gave it its name, correct? Yeah, we can really lay the misunderstanding at this guy's feet. For giving it this awesome name. Yeah.

He was like, that's, I'm gonna celebrate finishing this paper and naming it Exploding Head Syndrome by watching Miami Vice. That was still on in 1988, wasn't it? I don't know. Did you watch that? Sometimes. It was a little old for me.

Yeah, probably. Like I was like, man, that boat is so fast. Right. Man, that guy's blades are so pastel. That was about the extent of Miami Vice for me. Yeah, that was kind of the extent of the show. It wasn't? No, it was good.

I watched it. Michael Mann, wasn't it? Like a Michael Mann movie every week. That's pretty awesome. Yeah, I mean, he, I think he got it going, and then state executive producer. I don't know if I might be wrong. I don't know.

Who knows? I think he did the movie version too, like the remake years later. Surely he did, which I did not. I mean, it's got him written all over it. He though, I think that was his best one. Oh yeah, good movie. Although, did he do to live and die in LA?

I don't know, I love that movie though. Yeah, if he didn't, he should have. But that's a great movie. I think that might have been him. You're correct. Or, no, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Chuck. I know that this is a tangent, I'm trying to avoid it, but I just can't let it stand.

I think that Michael Mann accused whoever did to live and die in LA of ripping him off somehow. What? Yeah. Is that correct? I'm pretty sure. Which means not necessarily. Well, I had a great theme song, I know that.

Yeah, Wang Chung, baby. Yep. They were one of those bands from the 80s where you're like, oh, these guys were actually way more talented than their decade gave them credit for. It was not Michael Mann. Okay, so Michael Mann accused whoever did that of ripping him off for some reason.

William Friedkin. He, didn't he direct the Exorcist? Yeah. Wow. See, he's all over the place. He's got some Cajones after Billy Friedkin. Sure, how did we get on that, Miami Vice? Yep.

1988. So let's go over some stats. So as a study in 2015 of, boy, talk about bad studies, 211 college students. Okay, so your study already trumps this one? Sort of. Actually, yeah. Not even sort of, I would say legitimately,

the study you conducted is better than the one you're about to talk about. 18% of people experienced it according to this survey, but most experts say that's probably high because these are college students. They don't get a lot of sleep. Right. And that can affect whether or not you have this disorder

or think you have it. Yeah, people who are sleep deprived are more likely to have it, I think. Yeah. Psychiatric patients tend to have it a little more. 13 and more if you're talking about 10%, which is I think what generally people have settled on. You know, yeah, but just a little more,

like 3% more, 4% more than the average healthy population. Yeah. You know something I thought was very weird that I saw? People with other sleep disorders have it less frequently. Oh, really? Yeah. About 10% of people with sleep disorders

have exploding head syndrome, but like 10.8% of the general healthy population has it. So if you suffer from the one that we dare not speak its name, then you are less likely to have this. I guess so, but apparently it does happen in conjunction frequently. Interesting.

Just not as frequently as people in the general population who have just exploding head syndrome. Gotcha. What else? There's some people describe a physical sensation as well, like an electrical shock of sorts. Yeah, we should say, I don't know if we said it really explicitly enough.

Like when you have this sound that wakes you up as you're about to fall asleep. Yeah. And it is very clearly the sound of an explosion or symbols crashing or a gunshot. Like again, there's no associated pain. Right. Like most frequently the only physical symptom

is your heart pounding because you're scared to death. It would just be like if someone came in with symbols in your bedroom and smashed them together. But you would wake up and say, you're a jerk. Right. But you wouldn't be in pain. Go back to bed Stanley. But I think like there's not even the attendant

like pain in your ears. Right. I think it's strictly in your head. Yeah, yeah. So there's like almost no physical sensation except for like the electrical thing you're about to mean. The electrical shock. Right.

Just that. Yeah. And that's only in some people and it's literally just a feeling of a current that starts at your torso or so. And torso or so. Yeah. I didn't even mean that.

And it travels up to the head. But again, not everyone experiences that. So I think it's the interesting part of this. I mean, that's interesting. But is where this possibly comes from and like the process of going to sleep. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. 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 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. 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. 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. Stuff you should know. All right, Friendo, we definitely, I think, did a show on sleep, but as a recap. We did. You're right. It must not have been very memorable. When you go to sleep, it's not an instantaneous thing,

as you likely know. You fall asleep, and they call it that for a reason. It's a process. Yeah, that's true. Have your body kind of shutting down. I've never really thought about that before, but that's a pretty accurate description. Yeah, otherwise they would call it.

Lights out. Yeah. What were you gonna say? Finding yourself asleep, I don't know. That's probably not right either. Or just becoming sleep. Yeah, or sleep. Insta sleep.

Are we doing good on this one? Not so much. All right. If we are, we're fine, we're getting the facts out. We're just in cloaking them with a lot of BS. Okay, that's fine. All right, so when you fall asleep, your body slowly shuts down.

And the brain is kind of closing down each little store. Yeah. If it's, let's say your brain is a small town. Okay. It's closing each store. Your brain is Sam, the night watchman, from Today's Special. Walking around, shutting lights out, right?

Yes. Do you remember that show? No. It was probably way too young for you. It was called Today's Special, Kitchow. And what was the idea, that Everyday's Special? There was like a mannequin that came alive and just, it was weird.

Yeah, that sounds like a nightmare. It was set at night in like a department store, I think. Oh, okay. So I guess Today's Special might have been like what was on sale. Gotcha. Oh, I was kind of young. That reminds me of my favorite book as a child that I read,

The Great Christmas Kidnapping Caper. Well, I never read that one. It was wonderful. It was about three, I think three mice in New York City that broke into Macy's department store and lived there. Nice. And had great adventures in the department store overnight.

And Santa was kidnapped and it's up to these mice to solve the crime. Oh, wow. And it was my first like book. You know, it wasn't a 10 page picture book. Right. It was a book book. And the first one I really read and was like,

wow, this is amazing. Were the mice up to the challenge? Now, what do you think? I don't know. No, Santa died. Right. I totally forgot about that book. What a great memory.

Yeah. That's why I'm glowing right now. And you can enjoy it because you've been off the sauce for a little while. You've been getting good sleep. I'm lucid. So when you are making that transition into sleep from being awake, your brain is closing down

the little shop stores one at a time. And when you have exploding EHS, that is, there's something that happens. There's a glitch in the matrix, essentially, where somewhere along that path of your brain walking around shutting it down, it just sort of trips up. Yeah. So the part of your brain that is responsible

for shutting things down bit by bit, region by region, it's called the brainstem reticular formation. Yes. Very ancient part of your brain. Right. And they think that something goes wrong like you're saying when it's going through its duties and there's a glitch. But the glitch that happens is the alpha waves

that are associated with the beginning of relaxing for sleep are suppressed. And suddenly there's a huge burst of neural activity in the region associated with hearing. Right. So your brain has a glitch, your brainstem has a glitch while it's shutting your brain down for sleep. And you hallucinate a very loud sound

that startles you awake. That's exploding head syndrome, right? Yeah. As far as they know. A hallucinatory. Total hallucination. It doesn't exist as the neurons in the region associated with hearing going haywire.

Yeah, it's crazy. It is. What's crazy to me though, Chuck, is that it's a glitch in your system but that it can happen in different people. It's not like one person is like a malfunctioning like part of their brainstem. Like that process can malfunction

in exactly the same way across people. It says something about the architecture of the brain. What it says, I don't know. But it surely says something that that glitch can happen in different people in the same way. I just think that's fascinating. It totally is. And that theory that we talked about is,

well, first of all, they don't know for sure because it's so rare and it's such a non, I mean, it's invasive, but it's not threatening. Yeah. That they, you don't spend a lot of time studying stuff like this if it's not super threatening. No, but they used to think it's rare. They don't necessarily know if it's rare any longer.

It's just, it hasn't been studied for like, there's been basically four, five papers on it. So no one cares. Apparently not because it's not life-threatening at all. It's not even harmful. It's a benign condition. It's just very surprising. And apparently people learn to live with it,

at least ones on Facebook. Oh no, they all said they're in living hell. So that was, that theory is the one that is most agreed upon right now, but some of the others over the years include a shift of the middle ear components. Wrong. Or an ear dysfunction, maybe at the root.

No. They've done EEG testing to rule out, which did rule out temporal lobe seizures. Epilepsy. Yeah, but not in the case. No. And what's another one? There was one more that could be a side effect of drugs,

right? Yeah, drug withdrawal. Yeah. Yeah. Specifically benzodiazepines. Or it could have to do with calcium ion channels. Right. And calcium ion transportation,

which I think we've talked about it before, like calcium does a lot of stuff in our brains. Yeah. And throughout our bodies. I think that that's not necessarily discarded. That could be the mechanism that it happens by. So it's on the table. Yeah.

For me, I'm a fan of that one. I don't think that they're mutually exclusive. The reticular formation and calcium ions could go hand in hand. Yeah, you know what's funny to me? I was thinking about when I was prepping for this, about whenever there's usually a medical podcast where there's different theories,

you and I was like, well, this is the one I got my money on this one. Right. And it's just armchair, you know, doctoring, of course. Sure. But I feel like I could heal somebody if I really try. Faithful. Just through my opinion.

Yeah. So what do you do if you have this? Well, one of the funny things in the Atlantic article, which I sent in our own article, they said quite often simply being diagnosed and told by your doctor, yes, you have exploding head syndrome and no, it will not hurt you at all.

At all. Can cease the exploding head syndrome. Yeah, people will go into remission. Which indicates to me that stress has something to do with it. Yeah, I could definitely see how if you worry about it, it could affect your sleep. And then once your sleep is affected,

you're more prone to keep having it. Yeah, the cycle. A lot of people who, this happens to mistake it for a stroke or that they've developed epilepsy or something like that. And so they will go get, they will seek out medical help for that. And hopefully the doctor is heard of exploding head syndrome

and can recognize the symptoms. Yeah, or at the very least you can self-diagnose and take that to your doctor because they love that. Yeah, oh yeah. You know, tell me, Google it. Like when he starts to talk, just be like shh shh. Doctors love that. It is also not to be confused with PTSD.

Something we did at, I thought it was a really good show actually. I wanna say when he or she starts to talk. Sure, say shh shh. Yeah. Remember the PTSD? Yeah, yeah, that was a good one. That was a good one.

And it's not to be confused with that, even though similar things can happen with PTSD. It's usually some kind of a flashback. And with exploding head, it's not associated with anything like that. And this is a straight up hallucination. There's no memory associated with it. Yeah, exactly.

But what they will say is, sleep hygiene, work on it. Yeah, brush your teeth while you sleep. Sleep hygiene. I think hygiene's one of the most disgusting words in the English language. Interestingly, it is gross, even though that means. It's like paradoxical to its meaning.

Yeah. The word itself, the sound, the feel of it, the look of it. It does, I totally agree. It's a gross word. Hygiene sounds. I think because when I hear hygiene, I think you're usually hearing it

because there's poor hygiene. Maybe. People usually say like, oh, you got some good hygiene going on. Yeah. You smell wonderful. I always think of it in relation to eugenics. You know, like that kind of thought pattern.

Yeah. Hygiene, you know? So sleep hygiene is a weird gross way of saying best practices to fall asleep. Sure. And that means a regular schedule. You know, all the usual stuff. Yeah, like draw the blinds, make it quiet.

And this one, not reading in bed. That one to me, it's like, no, if I read in bed, it's like, I might as well have just taken a handful of volume. Well, reading a book book, sure, but a screen has been shown to keep you awake. Well, some recommendations are that you don't even read books in bed.

That you train yourself to associate bed with just sleep. No, man, I'm with you. So that when you get into bed, I read a book and I'm done. You're like, well, I'm sleeping. Yeah, not for all people, though. Like if you have bad insomnia, they'll recommend you don't do anything but sleep in bed.

Yeah, I mean, I get that. Like they say, take the TV out of your room, all that stuff. Yeah, but no, I'd be like, you're a fool. I can just read a book instead. I will never have insomnia because as long as there are books. All the books are around, I'm good.

What always kills me is when I see friends on Facebook, like 3 a.m., total insomnia, put your phone down. Yeah. You're being counterproductive. Because it's not just keeping your brain engaged in thinking, apparently that blue spectrum light really does something to your brain. And it's not good.

No. What else? No booze or coffee after five? Yeah, only booze before five. Yeah, I was like, that's happy hour. I think they were saying, yeah. They know booze after five. I mean, if you got a sleep, a parasomnia,

you're gonna go to great lengths. You're gonna skip happy hour maybe to get some sleep. Do we have anything else in here? We do not. All right. I think that's so great that you conducted a study. Hats off to you. I think it's funny that you thought that was so great.

I'm just impressed. All right. If you wanna know more about parasomnias like exploding head syndrome, you can type those words in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. So instead of Listener Mail, I conducted another study.

Just kidding. All right, this is, I thought this was really neat. This is Chernobyl. Hey guys, thanks for the fantastic podcast on radiation sickness. And for talking a bit about the Chernobyl disaster, it really captured my imagination. As a little girl, I remember one of my primary school teachers

telling the class, the disaster would mean the end of life as we know it, and it terrified me. Anyway, as the years went by, my interest grew. And back in 2013, I finally took the plunge and booked myself a trip to Kiev to go and visit the disaster site. Wow. And she said something about, I had to edit this

because it was long, it was good. But something about how, you know, that probably sounds weird, as a vacation. But she said, I'm a little like, if you're into it, that's an awesome vacation. The exclusion zone around Chernobyl is about 10 miles in each direction, is largely deserted, although a surprise to find

that there's still people living and working there. The nearby town of Pripyat is completely abandoned and very eerie, to say the least. We spent the day carefully walking on concrete and trying not to touch any of the moss growing between the concrete, because it's highly radioactive. Yeah, I'd be a little concerned as a visit. Oh yeah, as a visitor.

It's an extremely dangerous visit. We were able to get surprisingly close to the destroyed site as well. It was a very somber experience. There were a couple of very unnerving things that I learned that day that have stuck with me. The government of the then USSR tried to cover up the accident.

Didn't tell the people of Pripyat that they needed to evacuate for two whole days, inevitably causing many more deaths from radiation sickness than the inevitable. There were several reactors at Chernobyl. Reactor four blew up. Reactor four was right next to reactor three, which they thought was going to blow up.

Had reactor three blown up, it really would have been the end of life as we know it. Europe would have become completely uninhabitable. We all owe our lives to the unsung heroes. We sacrifice themselves to save reactor three and save Europe. Wow. Much love, that is Kate, Nottingham, England, and Kate is coming to see us in Manchester.

Awesome, Kate. Thanks a lot for that email. That's a really cool vacation. Yeah, she took her mom, her mom, and sent photos and had a lot more to the email, super interesting. Very cool. Thanks a lot, Kate.

And if you want to get in touch with us like Kate did, let us know about your super cool vacation. You can tweet to us at S.Y.S.K. podcast. You can join us on Instagram too with the same handle. You can hang out with us on Facebook.com. Participate in our studies that Chuck conducts at Facebook.com slash Stuff You Should Know.

You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.housestuffworks.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. 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. 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, 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.