by liberal japonicus
I was going through a backlog of links I had saved and finally got to listening this NPR Fresh Air interview about dreaming. I’ve had a small bit of success with lucid dreaming, but it has not been to the extent of being able to alter my dreams, I just realise I am asleep in my room and I can look around the room but am unable to move. While that doesn’t seem exciting, when I can do it, I feel that my sleep is much better and I feel much more relaxed when I wake up and perhaps others might discuss their own dreams here.
But the interview had this, which interested me.
in one condition, and in particular called REM behavior disorder, people really, they start acting out their dreams a lot. And this often occurs in men over 60. […] And it’s actually an indication of, it’s often – I mean, up to 90% of people who develop this sudden acting out of usually violent dreams, they might start punching or kicking while they’re asleep. And they dream about these aggressive or violent things. And it’s actually one of the earliest indications of someone developing neurodegeneration. So up to 90% of people who have REM behavior disorder, they will go on to develop some type of neurodegenerative disease – like Parkinson’s, I think, is the most common – within a decade of diagnosis. So it’s actually a really – it’s an early indicator that something, you know, some kind of neurodegenerative process has begun in the brain. And it’s resulting in this acting out of aggressive dreams, essentially.
This is really interesting, because I remember reading about awhile ago, how a some wives of NFL players said they would often get hit by their husbands while they were both sleeping. At the time, I wondered if it was just a cover story for some sort of domestic violence, but now, I wonder if that would be a symptom of CTE, perhaps happening at an age earlier than 60. Anyway, a thread about sleep and dreams.
I had a friend who, even as a young adult, would sometimes act out his dreams. Once, he tried to stuff his wife behind the headboard of the bed. A few years ago, in the late stages of Parkinson’s, he died after a fall.
i’ve had those kids of (RDB) dreams since my mid 30s.
Drs haven’t been interested.
Now that I have an older man’s prostate and bladder, I wake up once in the middle of the night because I have to pee. Sometimes I have trouble getting back to sleep after that, another common problem amongst the old. I have very vivid, complicated dreams, which are common side effects of the two long-term medications I take. I seem to dream more than I used to, but don’t have any of the symptoms (like waking up fatigued) that indicate excess dreaming. None of the acting-out behavior, the normal REM “paralysis” seems to be working just fine.
I’ve long been interested in what kind of nightmares people have — what makes you wake up huffing and puffing with the adrenaline pumping. The only ones that do that to me are dreams about vampires. For unknown reasons, while I know that witches and werewolves and such — everything except vampires — are just make-believe, part of me believes in vampires. I don’t know if the fear pre- or post-dates the time I finished reading Salem’s Lot in bed at 2:00 in the morning. I had to decide if I was going to walk across the room to turn the light off, knowing that I would have to walk back in the dark, or put my head under the pillow to sleep. I elected to put my head under the pillow.
None of the acting-out behavior, the normal REM “paralysis” seems to be working just fine.
A couple of times, I’ve woken and been completely paralyzed. But recovered in less than a minute.