Sleep Paralysis

An acquaintance I met recently asked me about 'sleep paralysis', after learning that I work in sleep. Since there are probably others with the same questions he had, I thought it'd be good to write about it here.

Sleep paralysis is the phenomenon where one wakes up from sleep, yet finds he/she cannot move. The only muscles that seem able to operate during this brief period are those of the eyes. This can be a terrifying experience - the acquaintance's first thought was that he had died and was having an out-of-body encounter. It is not that uncommon for folks with no history of sleep disorders to experience sleep paralysis occasionally.

It is believed that the cause of sleep paralysis is tied to the mechanism of REM sleep. During REM sleep, the body is normally atonic - meaning, your muscles do not exhibit any tone. (If you pick up someone's arm while they are in REM (without waking them up), it will be limp.) When you wake up, you are nearly always transitioning from REMS, and thus it's believed that sometimes the transition out of atonia lags a few seconds behind consciousness. The result is briefly feeling like your soul is stuck in the shell of your body.

Health benefits in having a bed partner

Not only is this article in the Wall Street Journal really well-written, but it strikes a chord with me because I'm getting married soon (and my fiance and I don't live together). In short, scientists in Vienna and Pittsburgh hypothesize that there are long-term health benefits to having a consistent bed partner.

In the case that you marry someone with significantly different sleep needs than you, how do you deal with it? In the article,

"Sleep specialists suggest couples with mismatched schedules initially retire together for that "special time in bed and negotiate that [the night person] gets to leave and come back later and then gets to sleep in," says Colleen E. Carney, associate professor at Ryerson University in Toronto."

In theory, this idea makes sense, but I wonder how well this works in practice. If the woman is generally the lighter sleeper, then she'll be disturbed when her partner gets out of bed and then returns later.

Lucky for the men, that they can get good sleep more easily. What's your secret?

Why is that?

Sleep Apnea Tied to Increased Cancer Risk.

Without a doubt, this NYT article summarizes an interesting and very, very important finding. However, without a robust understanding of why this is true, it's hard to really associate one with the other. I think this is the problem with most things in sleep, including the general (major) problem of sleep deprivation. Since we still seem to be a distance away from fully understanding the "why" underlying the short- and long-term effects of sleep deprivation, it's relatively easy for people to dismiss it as trivial issue - and instead, treat it as an issue of will power.

Plugs for apnea

The most e-mailed article on The New York Times website at the moment is about an alternative to the CPAP machine for sleep apnea. Although I'm not in the sleep apnea field, I'm surprised I haven't heard about it before. Regardless, the fact that the article is being widely disseminated affirms that sleep disorders are on many, many peoples' minds, and they probably aren't getting the attention they deserve.

NYT commentary on sleeping pills

When I saw this headline in the NYT today, I was surprised and excited: The case for Sleep Medicine. Then I read it and realized that the title is referring to "medicine for sleep" (that is, sleeping pills), not the field of Sleep Medicine as I had thought. Oh well. Still, it's a worthwhile read and interesting argument for using sleeping pills (despite the risks) to gain numerous health benefits because of the increase in sleep. Read it!

How can we get companies to pay attention to sleep?

Unfortunately I missed the live forum, but lucky for me the Harvard School of Public Health posted the entire video and transcript from the discussion on sleep deprivation, society, and policy a couple weeks ago. If you have an hour to spare (or are working on a mindless task) it's worth listening to it in its entirity, especially if you desire a brief but relevant peek into the field. If not, here's a clip I thought was really interesting. Dr. Czeisler is responding to a question by a professor in Occupational Health, who was wondering what single piece of information he would use to convince an employer that sleep should be on their radar.



Check out the forum in detail here.

For those with insomnia, sleeping pills are an increasingly bad idea

We all know someone taking sleeping pills, but now multiple studies have shown that sleeping pills are linked to mortality and cancer. Read the NYT column for a digestible - but worrisome - version of the latest findings.

Circadian disorders in disease

I recently finished reading this book: The Scientific American Day in the Life of Your Brain. I highly recommend it if you're at all interested in how the brain works. It's accessible, covers the most interesting topics, and is packed with legitimate information. I thought the first chapter or so was a bit dry, and I considered putting it down; if you feel the same, keep at it and it will get better. (As you can see, most Amazon reviewers agree with me.)

Close to the end of the book, sleep and circadian rhythms were discussed at length, including in the context of disease. I was pretty fascinated to learn that Alzheimer's patients often have dramatically shifted circadian rhythms, such that they tend to be awake early in the morning. The authors emphasize that this is quite unfortunate, since this is when the drive to sleep will be strongest for everyone else - including the caretakers. This combination amounts to an increased likelihood that the patient will wander around, get hurt, and go unnoticed for some time.

Similarly, patients with schizophrenia have rhythms that are very shifted or may even have lost their rhythm altogether. This is a surprising find, since light - via our eyes - is the strongest time-keeper, and this kind of decoupling with the world has only been observed in (some) blind people.

Experiments have shown that some of the circadian misalignment can be fixed with light therapy in Alzheimer's patients, and surprisingly has led to improved cognition in some of them. (Light therapy is simply a regular exposure to light with a lux bright enough and at the right range of frequencies to influence the biological clock.) At the time of my source's publication, they were planning to test whether this would help schizophrenic patients as well.

Source: Kraft. Sci Am Mind, June/July 2007.

Coffee won't help you gamble better

In an amusing but pretty important new study, a group from Harvard found that caffeine and other stimulants do not help sleep-deprived participants make better decisions when gambling. The researchers kept people up for nearly two days, giving them the Iowa Gambling Test after each day (which apparently assesses one's ability to make decisions in a casino-like environment). Caffeine (a whopping 600 mg), dextroamphetamine, and modafinil failed to reverse the negative cognitive effects of sleep deprivation. More evidence that there's no sub for sleep.

Source: Killgore et al. Chronobiol Int. 29, 2012

Have a snoring partner? Try this creepy pillow.

A Japanese lab recently offered a solution for snorers that irritate their bed partners. This pillow, made to look like a bear with mobile arms, uses decibel and oxygen sensors to cue the arms to gently tickle the user's face. The thinking is that tickling would be enough to cause the user to shift position without waking up, thus increasing the likelihood that the snoring would cease. In addition, it may succeed in creeping the user out so much that he (or she) won't be able to sleep anyway.



For more details, visit here.