Posted by Noa on September 7, 1999, at 21:21:03
In reply to Re: night terrors, posted by Terry on February 21, 1999, at 20:55:51
What Terry described sounds similar to something I have gotten from some of my meds--myoclonus. It is a sudden jerking of muscles when I am at rest, or drifting off to sleep. Most of the time it is just a slight twitch, but at times it was severe, and caused me to have a sudden total body jerk just after I fell asleep, accompanied by a sense of total panic, heart racing, etc. I remember having milder versions of this as a child, and it would feel like I was falling suddenly. But the version of it caused by ADs was much worse, and scarier. Also, I have sleep apnea, which, before I started treatment, caused me to wake suddenly in a panic, having dreamt that I was under water and unable to come to the surface to breathe. If snoring is an issue for you, this might be something to rule out. In any case, you might want to have a sleep study done because if the sudden feelings of terror awaken you at the beginning of your sleep, it might be causing microarousals throughout the night, which could greatly interfere with your sleep "architecture", as it is called in sleeplab lingo. Meaning, you can't stay in "deeper" sleep or REM sleep for long enough, because you keep "waking" (as far as the brain waves are concerned, even if you don't feel or seem awake and don't remember anything). For me, my apnea was causing me to have microarousals all night that made it impossible for me to enter REM sleep for a significant length of time (despite the fact that my subjective experience was that I was doing a lot of vivid dreaming). Just something to think about. BTW, for more info, there is a great site on sleep disorders called sleep forum..I'll look up the address and post it later.
poster:Noa
thread:2881
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990829/msgs/11197.html