Scientific explanation of sleep paralysis

Many people may have encountered the phenomenon of sleep paralysis in life. In fact, this can be explained from a scientific point of view. It is recommended that we should not be too superstitious, develop good rest and sleep habits, and adjust our mentality.

1. Sleep paralysis refers to the situation in which one suddenly becomes conscious but cannot move his body while sleeping. In fact, it is a sleep disorder. The phenomenon of "ghost pressing on the body" is a symptom of sleep paralysis in sleep neurology. The patient is in a state of half awake and half asleep during sleep, and the brain waves are at the amplitude of wakefulness. Some people also have visual hallucinations, but the muscle tension of the whole body is reduced to the lowest level.

2. Sleep paralysis refers to the situation where one suddenly becomes conscious while sleeping but cannot move his body. In sleep neurology, this is a symptom of sleep paralysis. The sleep cycle consists of the falling asleep phase, light sleep phase, deep sleep phase, and finally the rapid eye movement phase (dream phase). Sleep paralysis occurs during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of the sleep cycle, which is the sleep cycle when we enter deep sleep and begin to dream. During rapid eye movement sleep, a person's dreaming activities accelerate and the body's voluntary muscles begin to become still. This temporary paralysis sometimes causes the patient to be unable to move after waking up from a dream. During REM sleep, our skeletal muscles, except for the respiratory muscles and eye muscles, are in a state of extremely low tension. This is a protective effect that prevents us from acting out our dreams and hurting ourselves or our partner. Sleep paralysis occurs when, for unknown reasons, during rapid eye movement sleep, the consciousness is awake but the muscles of the limbs remain in a state of low tension, causing them to not obey the conscious command. Hallucinations are often caused by abnormal physical conditions that the brain cannot explain, coupled with fearful fantasies.

3. Sleep paralysis can occur during lunch break and nighttime sleep. In fact, this situation has nothing to do with ghosts. It has a formal medical name: sleep paralysis.

4. Sleep paralysis usually occurs when one has just fallen asleep or is about to wake up. The patient feels that he has woken up and can hear the surrounding sounds and see the surrounding images, but the body cannot move or make any sound, and sometimes is accompanied by hallucinations. Most people will feel panic at this time, but fortunately, this situation will usually restore the limb movements slowly or suddenly within a few minutes. Because of the panic feeling at the time of the attack, many people will feel scared after waking up, and intuitively think that they are being pressed by some unknown object, so there is the saying "sleep paralysis".