She said: "Aside from a few social media groups, there's so little out there about
sleep paralysis and no one seems to know much about it.
Najma Firas, 20, a Libyan-American student, said she experiences
sleep paralysis about four nights a night.
However, as a number of participants in the present study discussed negative emotions in terms of fear and confusion, some of these cases could be related to
sleep paralysis rather than anxiety.
The tetrad of EDS, cataplexy,
sleep paralysis, and hallucinations is the hallmark of narcolepsy, though not all of the symptoms need be present (Table I).
SLEEP paralysis is a condition that strikes a person who is most often in a supine position and is about to drop off to sleep, or has just woken up, and realises that he or she is unable to move, speak, or cry out.
Hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations are often associated with
sleep paralysis. (3,4) These are visual, somatic, auditory or other hallucinations, usually brief though sometimes prolonged, that occur at the transition from wakefulness to sleep (hypnagogic hallucinations) or from sleep to wakefulness (hypnopompic hallucinations).
Sleep paralysis is caused by a biological function that has evolved to prevent our body moving around and causing physical injury while we are dreaming.
``With abduction cases, there are psychological explanations such as vivid dreams or
sleep paralysis,but again there is a small hard core of cases which are extremely interesting.
Sometimes people with narcolepsy also suffer from a sudden loss of muscle function; a temporary kind of
sleep paralysis; or hallucinations (often frightening) when falling asleep.
Symptoms of narcolepsy include excessive daytime sleepiness (even dropping off to sleep at any time, whether it be watching TV or driving a car), cataplexy (brief episodes of muscle weakness brought on by strong emotion),
sleep paralysis (inability to move occurring at the moment of failing asleep), and hypnagogic hallucinations (dreamlike images that occur at sleep onset).
Cataplexy,
sleep paralysis and hypnagogic/ hypnopompic hallucinations are all abnormal manifestations of REM sleep.[1,2,22] The muscle atonia in cataplexy and
sleep paralysis is physiologically similar to the atonia occurring normally during REM sleep.[1] The visual, auditory or tactile hallucinations are physiologically similar to those sensations experienced during normal dreaming.[15]