Sleep Paralysis :: Biology Essays Research Papers

Sleep ParalysisYou are lying in bed taking a much-needed nap. You have had a long day and this little refresher is just what you need. You are slowly becoming awake and aware of what is going around you. You tail hear someone in the kitchen cooking and through the open window by your bed you can hear the sounds of the kids of the neighborhood jumping rope and acting hand games. You can even hear Old Mrs. Jones yelling at Little Johnny for running all over her flowers. You have been sleeping for slightly an hour and you feel that it is about time to get up. So you open your eyes, or at least you think you do. For reason some they are non open. So you think to yourself, That is odd, I thought I mentally told my eyes to open? So you try again, and this time you hear your voice in your passing game say, Eyes open but again nothing happens. Now you think maybe you are really out of it, and that you must be extremely tire and just need to rub your eyes a little to get them moving. So next you try to move your arm, only it is stuck. past you realize that your absolute body is stuck. You think that this situation has to be unreal. You are awake you have to be. You can obviously think to yourself, and you can hear everything that is going on deep down and outside, but why are you not moving? You try to open your mouth and call for help, but you cannot do that all. You are completely paralyzed Then you start to think this that is some sort of nightmare-and it is, except it is very much real. You are experiencing sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis is a condition that occurs at either the onset or upon awakening of sleep. The medical terms for the two forms of sleep paralysis are hypnogogic and hypnopompic (1). When a person falls asleep, the body secretes hormones that unloose certain muscles within the body, causing it to go into paralysis. Doing this prevents the body from acting out a persons dream, which could result in an injury. Sleep paralysis generally ru ns within ones family or in those who suffer from narcolepsy (2), but there is currently no explanation for why some people get it while others do not.