Acting out in my sleep
Posted , 2 users are following.
Does anyone have a source, or place I can start for my "disorder"
I act out in my sleep, once I got up to rip a poster off the wall, another I was patting the wall, one night I got up and kept clicking the fans pull string for the speed, and last night I straight up ripped off the pull string for the light. I don't remember doing, and if I do it's a very heavy fog.
Usually my wife wakes me up during or right after and I attempt to give some excuse. Usually trying to talk snaps me back into consciousness.
I never get off the bed for anything of it and it's typically an isolated incident with months in Between
0 likes, 2 replies
ashishmunde
Posted
i am very troubled because of this, recently i had guests at my place and this happened
--------------------------------------
ashish munde
Rufus MapQuest UpToDate
lily65668 ashishmunde
Posted
Hi Ashish,
Don't worry too much about this, but it's clear you have some kind of sleep disorder. If at all possible, you would benefit from spending the night in a sleep lab, so they can establish which disorder it is, in order to treat it.
There are two possibilities, arising from the two different phases of sleep. You probably already know that throughout the night we sleep in cycles of approximately one-and-a-half hours each. Part of these cycles is spent in REM, or dreaming, sleep and the other in non-dreaming sleep. REM stands for the rapid eye movements that can be observed in people who are dreaming. And everyone dreams, regardless of whether they remember their dreams or not.
The more common of the two sleep disorders that can cause the behaviour you're describing is a condition called night terrors (even if you're not scared while it's going on). This condition - which I have myself - arises from non-dreaming sleep, and is associated with sleepwalking. The person wakes suddenly from a deep, dreamless sleep in the grip of some unlikely scenario, usually involving the flight-or-fight reflex. I've done some crazy things in my time, including running screaming down the corridors of a hotel in my nightdress and, on another occasion, coming to my senses just as I was about to jump out of my bedroom window. However, these days - in old age - I usually have the more sedate kind of attack, where I suddenly sit up in bed thinking there's something I have to do urgently, then wake fully before going back to sleep.
Some people remember all the details of their night terror episodes, including the scenario they thought they were in at the time. This has always been the case for me. However, the majority tend not to remember anything, and only find out about their episodes when told by someone else.
Night terrors are not always easy to treat, but many people are helped by being prescribed the anticonvulsive drug clozapine. They are sometimes - but not always - a symptom of anxiety, and tend to get worse at times of stress in any case. In these cases, "talking therapies" like CBT may be helpful.
A much rarer cause for these nocturnal excursions could be REM sleep disorder. This arises from the REM (dreaming) phase of sleep. Normally the brain secretes a hormone that virtually paralyses all our voluntary muscles during REM sleep, to stop us jumping up and acting out our dreams. It doesn't paralyse the muscles of the autonomic system, which control things like breathing, automatic swallowing and all the other functions that keep us alive while we're sleeping, so there's no need to worry about this.
In a very small number of people, this system doesn't function, allowing them to physically act out their dreams. Once diagnosed, this rare condition is easily managed by taking an antidepressant, preferably of the older tricyclic group (e.g. amitriptyline). This is not because it's a symptom of depression. Suppression of REM sleep just happens to be a spin-off effect of this group of drugs. However, the medication has to be taken for life.
Since both conditions appear to manifest in a similar way, in spite of having totally different causes, the only way you can find out for sure which you have is to get a sleep study done. However, there may be a few clues. For example, it's usual for most of the early-night sleep cycles to be spent in non-REM sleep, with REM (dreaming) sleep occurring more often towards morning - though this isn't an absolute for everyone. Therefore, if you notice that more of your episodes are occurring early in the night, it's more likely to be night terrors, and vice versa.
Also, do you have any awareness that you were dreaming when you had the episode, and your actions fitted in with what you were dreaming about? This would indicate REM sleep disorder. However, things are complicated by the fact that most people don't remember their dreams anyway, so the fact that you don't notice that episodes are associated with dreams doesn't necessarily mean much.
The bottom line is that the only certain way to find out which of these two very different disorders you have is to get a sleep study. Hope this helps.