Informative Draft
English
21003, Section M
Professor
Matyakubova
13
September 2017
Informative report Sleep
Paralysis and the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) Cycle
When sleep is mentioned people tend
to think of it as a time you let your body and mind to relax. Sleep paralysis
is something that disturbs a person mentally, just think about waking up
morning not being able to move any of your muscles and not being to speak. In
many cases the cause of sleep paralysis is common with people who are
psychiatric patients. Sleep paralysis doesn’t just happen to people with
medical issues but it can happen to a normal average person. So, every time you
go to sleep, there is a chance you risk of waking up paralyzed. Sleep paralysis
is something that happens during your REM cycle, but the causes has been uncertain
to scientists for many years.
What is REM and Sleep paralysis?
Sleep
paralysis happens when a person is unable to move or speak but are mentally
awake, this state is also called atonia. Sleep
paralysis happen when awake and falling asleep, when one gets sleep paralysis
they are unable to move but they are aware of their situation. Sleep Paralysis
happens because it is said to prevent people from acting out their
dreams. Sleep Paralysis can be scary for many people, waking up not
being able to move their body and not knowing the reason. People would freak
out because they aren’t able to move causing a panic that increases their heart
rate.
Isolated
sleep paralysis is listed for people who have sleep paralysis but without the
medical conditions listed above. ISP lasts to 1
or 2 minutes during this time the person is unable to move or speak, but
breathing is not affected. The difference is that there are cases where person
may have dream-like visuals often said to be hallucination which can be scary.
According to the article “Sleep
deprivation suppresses the increase of rapid eye movement density across sleep
cycles”, REM (rapid eye movement) is
something that happens when a person is dreaming. It is said during REM sleep
your eyes move quickly in a random motion. The REM cycle has 4 stages each
stage, each stage increases your depth of sleep. (Cristina, et al 2).
Courtesy of http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2869.2010.00886.x/pdf
But there is also non-Rem cycle where rapid eye
movement doesn’t occur. At first, we go through the non-REM cycle and
eventually we will end up in the REM cycle, dreams occasionally happen during
REM sleep. Non-REM phase can last 15-30 minutes. Stage one occurs the moment
you close your eyes but you can still be awakened easily. Stage 2 is when your
heart rate slows down and the temperature of your body drops. Stage 3 is when
you hit the deep sleep stage and if awakened during this stage disoriented
feelings will occur for a short time. REM
cycle usually occur after 60-90 minutes after you have fallen asleep (Cristina, et al 2).
One possible factor of sleep paralysis can be
being sleep deprived, According to the article “Isolated Sleep
Paralysis: Fear, Prevention, and Disruption.”
“There
were 35 studies that consist of 36,000 participants, found that 7.6% of the
general population experience sleep paralysis, 28.3% of them were students, and
31.9% were psychiatric patients. Sleep paralysis is also found in certain
medical conditions (e.g., narcolepsy, seizure disorders)” (Brian, et.al 1).
This shows that sleep
paralysis occurs at a high rate to students and to patients with psychiatric
history. It can be said that sleep deprivation can be one of the causes to
sleep paralysis because many students in universities are likely to suffer from
sleep deprivation. Due to excess work/studying needed do well academically. So,
some ways to prevent sleep paralysis can be as easy as getting more sleep.
The major problem about this medical condition is
that it is almost impossible to find accurate information, since these
so-called experiments were just surveys. These factors are possible causes of
sleep paralysis from surveys they have given. There can be many possible factors
to sleep paralysis that is still unknown today.
Even with all the negatives effects about sleep
paralysis, there are still some positives effects about having sleep paralysis.
Atonia helps protect a person and others from any physical injuries they can
receive, by taking away physical movement one will not be able to sleep walk.
Without atonia sleep walking would be a common thing and many people will be
doing crazy things daily while being unaware what they are doing.
Since the cause of sleep paralysis and how the
REM cycle is related has been uncertain for many years. The REM cycle is common
for everyone and during this cycle, muscles would go through a state atonia.
When in atonia your muscles will be in a relaxed state restricting movement
during sleep. The possible causes of sleep paralysis are sleep deprivation and
certain medical conditions. Sleep paralysis can affect people mentally because
one can see hallucination during the state of sleep paralysis. With sleep
paralysis being a risk to anyone and not just to people who are mentally/physically
ill, more people need to be educated because if it happens they need to know
how to react and not to panic.
Work Cited
Sharpless, Brian Andrew and Jessica
Lynn Grom. "Isolated Sleep Paralysis: Fear, Prevention, and Disruption." Behavioral
Sleep Medicine, vol. 14, no. 2, Mar/Apr2016, pp. 134-139. EBSCOhost,
doi:10.1080/15402002.2014.963583.
Marzano, Cristina, et al. "Sleep
Deprivation Suppresses the Increase of Rapid Eye Movement Density
across Sleep Cycles." Journal of Sleep Research, vol. 20, no. 3, Sept.
2011, pp. 386-394. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2869.2010.00886.x.
Michael Grözinger, Domien G.M Beersma, Jürgen Fell,
Joachim Röschke, Is the nonREM–REM sleep cycle reset by forced awakenings from
REM sleep?, Physiology & Behavior, Volume 77, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 341-347,
ISSN 0031-9384, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0031-9384(02)00862-4.
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