Sali's Easily Forgotten Info

Yes, sleep.  How often have you tried to stay awake for nearly 24 hours? Maybe to work, study for an exam, to finish a project, or just having fun partying with friends. No matter the reason sleep deprivation is a big risk, both for your health and your environment. 

Twenty-four hours without sleep can produce as much impairment as being legally drunk.

As I was looking through www.howstuffworks.com I came across an interesting article. How Can Someone Stay Awake for 11 Hours?  A man in Cornwall, England, actually went 11 consecutive days without a wink of sleep.

The Guinness Book of World Records no longer acknowledges sleep deprivation attempts because they feel that they’re too dangerous. In 1964 the record  of 274 hours without sleep was set. This record was in the Guinness Book until they removed the category entirely in1989

Consequently, sleep deprivation is a major contributor to auto accidents and may have contributed to disasters such as the explosion at Chernobyl and the Exxon Valdez crash. Sleep deprivation is also a major concern for people working long hours (such as doctors and night shift employees) and for anyone suffering from sleep apnea, which causes high blood pressure, stress and low oxygen levels in the blood. Repeated sleep deprivation can increase your appetite and lead to weight gain. 

Long-term sleep deprivation can cause vision problems, hallucinations, paranoia, mood swings, difficulty communicating or understanding others, a compromised immune system and depression.

www.howstuffworks.cm article by Jacob Silverman.

Ever wake up in the middle of the night (or day) and see a ghost or monster sitting on you or next to you?     There maybe an explanation.

There are 5 stages of sleep, one of them is R.E.M. (rapid eye movement) stage.  During this stage people dream, and extensive physiological changes occur, such as increased brain activity, accelerated respiration, eye movement, and muscle relaxation. In order to keep us from acting out our dreams our bodies secrete hormones that paralyze us.  During most regular sleep cycles the hormones begin to wear off even before the dream is completed, that’s why people wake up with a perfectly functioning body. However, sometimes an individual awakens before the hormones  become inactive.  They are now completely awake but paralyzed.  On occasion, immediately after the person is awake, they are startled by a terrifying visual hallucination. Sometimes this hallucination takes on a stereotypical form. It is usually a vision of a creature sitting on their chest and possibly choking them. Some people say that Alien Abduction victims are nothing more than Sleep Paralysis victims.  I haven’t experiences either one of  those things so I can’t say whether or not it’s true.  I guess either one is a possibility. I do think that all the millions of people that reported alien abduction deserve a better explanation.

If you want to know more….

Not all people waking up with a sleep paralysis hallucinate.  There are two types of sleep paralysis.  The Common Sleep Paralysis and the Hallucinatory Sleep Paralysis (HSP) and the Hag phenomena. HSP is a lot less common.  The source of the hallucination has often been attributed to the hypnagogic state (the state between wakefulness and sleep.) 

 1) Whereas CSP is common and universal HSP is rare and seems to be geographically episodic.

2) CSP is of relatively short duration where HSP can last as long as seven or eight minutes.

3) The major difference of course is that CSP maybe unsettling for the sleeper but the HSP is accompanied by a nightmarish hallucination.”

Something to think about…..

“There is evidence that Hallucinatory Sleep Paralysis seems to affect an area (e.g. a village) much like an epidemic. A region that has had no HSP’s reported may all of a sudden be inundated by sleepers suffering from HSP. Though this is relatively new research it seems regions stay infected for upwards to three years, with the most common being only a few months. There is of yet no explanation for this.”

Still think it’s sleep Paralysis?  Maybe not

via:http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=004foe www.howstuffworks.com