Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Over 10000 people in the world are killed by Sleepwalking.


Now, one more interesting topic, the fuel for writing such articles always come from the inspiration i get from technology. Now, this article contains plenty of research done over the past weeks, just like the other articles, im sorry to announce that there are very few articles pertaining to chemistry here because i obviously cannot write an article saying that i have discovered the cure of cancer! But, to repay that loss, this article is made as intereting as possible, i promise you you won't get your eyes off this article! I shall start by telling you a story.

2008, just in the night when all the Americans were in their homes sound-asleep, Brian was actually semi-conscious. He was not awake, nor was he asleep, he was just semi-conscious. Now, in your semi-conscious state, you can move inside your house without banging into any walls, but its just that you do not have the ability to make decisions, the right ones. You will not fall on the staircase and you will be able to take a drink out of the refrigerator to drink in your semi-conscious state but you can't decide whether to jump out of the window or not. Well, what Brian did was he got out of his bed at night, wrapped his hands around his wife's neck and squeezed and never let go. What, happened? She suffocated while asleep and died whereas Brian continued happily in his night terror, unnoticeable killing his wife. He found out about it only after he woke up but he didn't have any inkling about it when he was asleep at all, he was a victim of sleepwalking. According to police, Brian said that he saw a man wearing jeans and a black fleece laying on top of his wife, then he said he screamed at the man and grabbed him around his throat, but when he woke up, his hands were around his wife's neck instead!

So what causes sleepwalking in the first place? Usually, the culprit is the things that happen during the day, if you see something unpleasant for the whole of your day, then you are twice as likely to have nightmares, another factor is people suffering from sleep apnea who's sleep mostly falls under the rapid eye movement category. And how to find out if your family member has obstructive sleep apnea? If one day, you wake up and find your brother shifting their legs and arms in a fit-like movement, or snore consistently for long periods of time, you should consult a doctor before its too late. A sleepwalker's brain effectively "short circuits" allowing sleepwalkers to get up and start walking around. In our sleep, we have REM and Non REM sleep, sleepwalkers have difficulty switching from REM to NON REM sleep., which makes one part of the brain active and the other, idle, making the person self-conscious. When sleepwalkers dream, the brain allows them to act out their dream while for non, sleepwalkers, the brain paralyses them and prevents them from acting out their dreams. One such astonishing example will be a man who drove 20km without crashing before stabbing his mother in law and injuring his father in law!

This is actually because everyone's mid brain stores instinctive behavioral patterns, thus sleepwalkers will be able to do things without falling, banging, crashing or injuring themselves.There were also cases where people hanged themselves while sleeping and people jumping out of their windows. So, how do you sleep well then? Refrain from drinking a few hours before you sleep and keep the same sleep pattern everyday. Also, one should keep his/her bedroom dark and quiet because light suppresses our body's sleep hormone and makes it difficult for us to sleep.


Another fun fact is how to imitate the sleepwalking? Deprive someone of sleep, the allow them to sleep and in the middle of their sleep, play a very loud noise in the middle of the night, here, the will start to sleepwalk. Almost 12 percent of Singapore's youngsters sleepwalk now! Just one piece of advice for the sleepwalkers-don't sleep in the nude, because if you sleepwalk, you are gonna show off all your privaties!

I hope after this article, you have learnt about the dangers of sleepwalking and how brutal it can kill!

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