Sleep disorders and disturbances. I start with the science, you bring in the alternatives

Originally posted by Alien44
Is this a re-post? I read this a few months ago, or am I dreaming?

As far as I'm aware this is an original compilation and organization of research. If there is another thread with relevant information on this subject, please do share.

I've had to go to a clinic for an overnight sleep study to determine how bad my apnea is. The cause is because I have CF, and by comparison the apnea, severe as it is (hundreds of events and abysmal O2 levels) it is the least of my worries but it's something I have to address.

Like so many others I have to have a CPAP with an additional O2 feed from a concentrator just to be able to breathe "normally" for the night. It sucks, but there's really no alternative for something like this.

I suppose things like capsaicin and frequent saline rinses help a little bit, and would probably be much more effective in someone without CF, but the effects of these (for me) are very short-lived and like many treatments both pharmaceutical and alternative they have diminishing returns.

My MD did at first giggle when I mentioned hot peppers (I love them!) but after thinking on it briefly she said it was actually a pretty good idea and all one can do is try it and see how well it works out.

ETA: For other apnea sufferers who may be interested, the AHI score for me was somewhere in the 80's, which if I understand it correctly works out to an event every 45 seconds or so with my SpO2 frequently dipping into the 70th percentile. I don't really know anyone else who has apnea so if you are willing to share your numbers if you know them I'd be interested in what it's like for someone without CF.

The only moments in my life in which I have truly experienced full panic have been while having nightmares, incredibly vivid nightmares. The panic will usually be as intense as to wake me up, and once I do Im feeling so nervous that I can't fall sleep again (I will usually stay up the rest of the night watching tv until the sun comes out). I used to believe these were night terrors, but thanks to the OP I can see now they are not.

I also suffer from sleep paralysis a lot, the kind in which I feel like I can't breathe and/or move.. It usually happens early in the morning when Im not quite ready to get up, and I can spend hours (or at least it feels like that) entering in and out into sleep paralysis state (once Im able to regain control of my body, I would usually fall asleep again).

Awesome thread OP, the dream state is something that has always fascinated me.

Hmmm. It seems there's a distinction between hypnagogia and night terrors now of which I was unaware. I suffered night terrors as a child up until about the age of ten years, and was always (consistently) told by the therapists my parents took me to (which they did because it was quite disruptive and frequent) that it was a hypnagogic state.

Then again, I also see that one of the DSM criteria for night terror is that the person can't recall details of the dream or experience, which is also not the case for me. Not only could I always recall my night terrors, but they were usually one of several identical dreams. I can remember them to this day, in fact.

So, question: what would you classify something with all the other hallmarks of a night terror, but with vivid, detailed, and recurrent recollection as? An atypical night terror? Or is there room for variation?

Peace.

Originally posted by AceWombat04
Hmmm. It seems there's a distinction between hypnagogia and night terrors now of which I was unaware. I suffered night terrors as a child up until about the age of ten years, and was always (consistently) told by the therapists my parents took me to (which they did because it was quite disruptive and frequent) that it was a hypnagogic state.

Then again, I also see that one of the DSM criteria for night terror is that the person can't recall details of the dream or experience, which is also not the case for me. Not only could I always recall my night terrors, but they were usually one of several identical dreams. I can remember them to this day, in fact.

So, question: what would you classify something with all the other hallmarks of a night terror, but with vivid, detailed, and recurrent recollection as? An atypical night terror? Or is there room for variation?

Peace.

My son had night terrors, scared the crap out of me many times I would hear a blood curdling scream and then his little feet hitting the floor as he ran into my room. He was really young so he couldn`t go into detail about what happened but I had no problems letting the tike snuggle between mom and me. Im curious if your dreams are memories of a past event or just a deep embedded fear. Its strange that they a recurrent

Bill

in reply to NarcolepticBuddha's posts:#pid16419434, #pid16423239, #pid16424507, #pid16424953; post by CuriousAchilles, post by vivid1975, post by AceWombat04, and this Fortean Times article.

...With a little practice, anyone can learn how to watch otherwise obscure mental processes at work; processes which, according to some investigators, take place continuously alongside our waking "rational" mental states. As well as providing some fascinating interior entertainment, familiarizing yourself with hypnagogia is probably the best and most reliable method of developing a working relationship with your unconscious mind...
... hypnagogic phenomena ... have a recognizable structure and meaning. And, like other products of the dark side of the mind, they have an intelligence that often exceeds that of the waking mind observing them....
... what we call "waking state" is really an REM dream state, with a sensory topping. Or, as Ouspensky put it, we shouldn't speak of being either asleep or awake, but of "sleep plus waking state."
... the hypnagogic state is profoundly 'autosymbolic', i.e. that the symbols and images produced represent either the thoughts or the physical or mental state of the hypnagogist.
... the conditions necessary to produce autosymbolic phenomena were "drowsiness and an effort to think", something familiar to most of us from our school days. The struggle of these two "antagonistic elements" elicits the autosymbolic response.
... Our inner world of dreams and visions comes before the outer one of sensory stimuli, something the poets have always known.

I believe that this state of "falling asleep" -Is- a direct link to our subconscious brain... or our OLD BRAINS [see Mavromatis' interpretation below]...

...the psychologist Andreas Mavromatis, who in 1987 published Hypnagogia, an exhaustively researched and deeply pondered exploration of all aspects of the experience. Mavromatis links hypnagogia to dreams, schizophrenia, creativity, meditation, mystical experience, and, most strikingly, paranormal experience. ... [and] 'shared hypnagogia' ...
[H]ypnagogia originates in the subcortical structures of the 'old brain'. During hypnagogic states, the usually dominant neocortex – the evolutionarily recent and specifically 'human' part of the brain – is inhibited, and much older structures take over. Cortical activity is associated with clear, logical thought and with the perception of a well defined ‘external’ world. The older brain structures are attuned to inner experience, and to ‘pre-logical’ forms of thought using imagery, symbols and analogy. Mavromatis also remarks that the subcortical structures responsible for hypnagogic phenomena are always active, day or night...

Mavromatis... I am putting his book Hypnagogia on my TBR list.
I have been made conscious of "hypnagogia phenomena" in my childhood and adolescent years... It was what I recall now to be somewhat like changing the stations of a radio or channels on a television. I could flip through dream-scapes at will, pass up horrific and scary nightmarish looking ones for interesting, picturesque, and tranquil ones. I would, then, fall through my mattress, garage [as my garage was below my room, at the time]... This feeling was probably the beginning of "sleep paralysis"

We spend approximately 1/3 of our lives in this altered state of consciousness, and I think it’s worthy of more (open-minded) medical and scientific research.

Sure is. I couldn't agree more.

Need for sleep is probably our most fundamental biological urge--we can't eat or reproduce without sleep, right? Sleep is the first thing on the list that needs taken care of.

Sufficient sleep is one of the primary, primitive needs of human kind.

Only a polysomnography test can reveal for sure what the cause is.

I am thinking I should probably have one of these things done soon ... But I've got to get more information ... I think I would have difficulty because a perscriber or provider could deduce that my sleep problems stem from anxiety.

sleep paralysis so much, so often, for so long that it's practically just a normal part of my daily cycle. I suspect that it's actually just a normal function--as normal as any of the other things our bodies do

It is. Awarness isn't!!!