It should be one of the foremost relaxing times of the day. You climb into bed, get comfortable and cozy, start to feel your brain slowing down … then suddenly you experience a shocking falling sensation. It’s such as you misjudged the number of stairs you were walking down, leaving your leg in mid-air for just a touch longer than you expected. Not pleasant. This bedtime tumbling sensation is that the phenomenon referred to as the “hypnic jerk” and should sometimes be amid a visible hallucination. you'll have heard it called a “sleep start”, the “hypnagogic jerk” or the “myoclonic jerk”, except for the sake of sanity we’ll just persist with the previous.
So what is it?
The hypnic jerk occurs when the muscles, usually within the legs (although they will be observed throughout the body), involuntarily contract quickly, almost sort of a twitch or spasm. Although the explanations behind this aren't that well understood, the evolutionary perspective suggests that it serves a minimum of two important but interrelated functions, the previous of which remain relevant today.
First, this sudden awakening allows us to see our surroundings one last time, a chance to make sure that it really is safe to travel to sleep by creating a startle-like response. you would possibly have accidentally dropped off somewhere dangerous, after all. Another suggested evolutionary function is that it allowed us – or a minimum of our early ancestors – to see the steadiness of our body position before we visited sleep, especially if we began to nod off during a tree.
The jerk would allow us to check our “footing” before unconsciousness set in. The other main theory suggests that the hypnic jerk is simply a symbol of our active physiological system finally giving in, albeit sometimes reluctantly, to our sleep drive, moving from active and volitional control to a state of relaxation and eventual bodily paralysis. In essence, the hypnic jerk could also be a symbol of the eventual switch between the brain’s reticular activating system (which uses arousal neurotransmitters to assist wakefulness) and therefore the ventrolateral preoptic nucleus (which utilizes inhibitory neurotransmitters to scale back wakefulness and promote sleep).
When jerks go bad
Either way, although in most cases a traditional and phenomenon, the hypnic jerk is often a rather disconcerting or frightening experience. In extreme cases – whether in terms of frequency or the speed and violence of the jerk – it can keep people awake, preventing them from entering the traditional sleep onset process, resulting, within the longer term, during a sort of sleep-onset insomnia. As the hypnic jerk is said to motor activity, anything that's getting to keep your motor system active in the dark is probably going to extend the probabilities of you having one – and possibly even a more intense one, too. As such, caffeine (or other stimulants) and/or vigorous exercise within the evening and high stress and anxiety levels in the dark are related to an increased chance of a spontaneous hypnic jerk and will, where possible, be avoided. Other associations include being overtired or fatigued, sleep-deprived, or having an erratic sleep schedule. Here, keeping an honest regular sleep/wake pattern can help.
Finally, from a nutritional perspective, it's been suggested, albeit anecdotally, that magnesium, calcium, and/or iron deficiencies can also increase the probabilities of experiencing a spontaneous hypnic jerk. That said, it's also been suggested that hypnic jerks are often evoked through sensory stimulation, during the sleep onset period, so ensuring that your sleep environment is cool, dark, and quiet could also help reduce the frequency and intensity. It is actually little or no research on the subject, presumably because it's largely seen as a traditional phenomenon, making it difficult to suggest a definitive “treatment”.
However, we do know that as we grow old the number of hypnic jerks we'll experience should decrease naturally. the most issue to think about here is whether or not the hypnic jerk is causing you or your bed partner a problem? If it's, then it's time to ascertain a sleep specialist. the problem is there are various sleep disorders, like sleep apnoea, that have symptoms that mimic the experience. And if all else fails, perhaps just blame the ancestors.
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