In most cases, sleep is a quiet, continuous period in which you just wake up in the morning, feeling relaxed and energized for the new day.
However, there are small disturbances that can affect sleep and can make you feel tired and even frightened. Here are some of the more curious sleep disorders:
1. Walking while sleeping
Sleepwalking is one of the most well-known altered sleep behaviors and usually happens because the body is no longer in the deepest phase of sleep and therefore the muscles are able to move. However, the mind is still asleep and therefore, although the body is moving, the person is not aware of what he is doing.
Being sleepy does not cause health problems, but can put the person at risk, since one can fall or even leave the house to the middle of the street, for example. Here are some practical tips for dealing with sleepwalking.
2. Feeling that you are falling
The feeling that you are falling is more frequent at the time you are trying to fall asleep and it happens because the brain is already beginning to dream, but the body is not yet completely relaxed, reacting to what is happening in the dream and moving involuntarily, which creates the sensation of being falling.
While this may happen on any given day, it is most common when you are very tired, lacking sleep or when stress levels are very high, for example.
3. Can not move after waking up
This is one of the most frightening situations that can happen during sleep and which consists of the inability to move the body after waking up. In this case, the muscles are still relaxed, but the mind has already woken up and so the person is aware of everything, just can not get up.
Paralysis usually subsides within a few seconds or minutes, but in this period the mind can create illusions that make some people see someone by the bed, for example, which leads many people to believe that it is a mystical moment. Learn more about sleep paralysis and why it happens.
4. Talk during sleep
The ability to talk during sleep is similar to sleepwalking, however, muscle relaxation does not allow the whole body to move, allowing only the mouth to speak.
In these cases, the person is talking about what they are dreaming of, but these episodes last only about 30 seconds and are more frequent during the first 2 hours of sleep.
5. Having intimate contact during sleep
This is a sleep disorder, known as sexonia, in which the person initiates a sexual relationship during sleep without being aware of what he is doing. It is an episode very similar to somnambulism and is usually not related to how one behaves when one is awake.
Understand sexology better and what its signs are.
6. Listening or seeing an explosion
This is a rarer episode known as an explosive head syndrome that can affect some people during the first few hours of sleep and makes the person wake up very frightened because they heard an explosion or saw a flash of intense light, although nothing happened.
This happens again because the mind is already falling asleep, but the senses of the body are still awake, reflecting some dream that is beginning.
