We were three middle-aged men crossing a park at night. To our left were flats, around us a gloomy expanse of grass. We muttered angrily.<\/p>\n
Our path led us past some derelict, steel-shuttered public conveniences surrounded by bushes, where a group of teenage boys was lurking. They stepped out, barring our way.<\/p>\n
I aimed a karate kick at the first hooded youth but he must have been armed, perhaps with a baseball bat, as I felt a blow on my cheek . . . and awoke in shock, on the floor beside the bed.<\/p>\n
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Gendered:\u00a0REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) mostly afflicts men over the age of 50<\/p>\n
It had been a vivid dream. There was no park, no thugs, no danger. The room was light, so it was after dawn (and I can\u2019t do karate). But the pain was real as I realised that, dreaming, I\u2019d kicked out and flung myself out of bed, cracking my cheekbone on the bedside table.<\/p>\n
There was a livid bruise across my right cheek. An inch or two higher and it would have been my eye. My wife was sympathetic, though probably glad I\u2019m not left-footed, or she would have been on the receiving end of the kick.<\/p>\n
At work, when I recounted what had happened, colleagues were incredulous. \u2018That\u2019s the most ridiculous story I ever heard,\u2019 said one. But it was true. It happened about a year ago. Then, last month, it happened again.<\/p>\n
DJ, 29, can’t walk or talk after being struck down by a…<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Incredibly rare coincidence as two sisters are BOTH…<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n ‘It’s sick to think I’d lie about having breast implants to…<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Yo-yo dieting more than DOUBLES your risk of an early death…<\/span><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n This time I was playing football against geriatrics dressed in nightclothes and slippers. I tried to flick the ball over one grandpa\u2019s head, then felt a thunderous blow on my nose. And woke up. I\u2019d done it again \u2014 kicked out in reality and hurled myself out of bed, hitting the bedside table. There was a cut on the side of my nose and blood was pouring from both nostrils. Wife, daughter and dog had all been rudely awoken.<\/p>\n Why was this happening to me?<\/p>\n It turns out I am one of countless Britons afflicted by parasomnias, unusual behaviour during sleep. This can include walking, talking, eating, as well as the more common kicking and arm-flailing.<\/p>\n Did you know? The incidence of RBD rises steeply after 60, and especially after the age of 80<\/p>\n My form is what is known as an REM sleep behaviour disorder.<\/p>\n Sleep is divided into five stages \u2014 in the first, we are almost daydreaming and easily awoken. Stage two is light sleep, and stages three and four are deep sleep, when we become hard to rouse and groggy if we do wake up.<\/p>\n The final stage is rapid eye movement (REM) sleep \u2014 when, for reasons not fully understood, our eyes dart around under closed lids. This is when we dream and when the body\u2019s major muscles can\u2019t move.<\/p>\n The complete cycle, from light sleep to REM, lasts around 90 minutes, then restarts from the beginning, so in a typical night, it is repeated four or five times. The time we spend in REM sleep varies, but is normally about 20 per cent of total sleep, says Dr Tim Quinnell, a consultant respiratory and sleep disorders physician at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge. This means we dream for about two hours each night.<\/p>\n Sleepwalking, sleep-talking and so-called \u2018night terrors\u2019 \u2014 feelings of fear that can make people lash out or scream \u2014 happen during non-REM sleep (mostly during the first third of the night).<\/p>\n These are sometimes known as \u2018disorders of arousal\u2019 and sufferers are thought to be half-asleep, half-awake at the time, but in the morning, they can\u2019t recall having done or said anything unusual.<\/p>\n REM disorders, by contrast, involve muscles moving suddenly during vivid dreams when they ought to be immobilised (mostly in the last third of the night). Sufferers go straight from dreaming to wakefulness, and realise instantly what has happened.<\/p>\n Symptoms: Tell-tale signs include talking, eating, kicking and arm-flailing, plus sleep-walking<\/p>\n \u2018During the REM dreaming stage, people should be completely paralysed,\u2019 says Dr Quinnell. \u2018The eye and breathing muscles work but nothing else.\u2019<\/p>\n A study at the University of Toronto in 2012 established that two brain chemicals, gamma-aminobutyric acid and glycine, normally work to keep muscles paralysed during REM sleep.<\/p>\n If these don\u2019t function properly, the chemical \u2018brake\u2019 on the nervous system that should stop us acting out dreams can fail, and we start making noises or moving in keeping with our dreams. This, it seems, was what happened to me.<\/p>\n In fact, enacting parts of dreams turns out to be a condition in itself, REM sleep behaviour disorder, or RBD, which mostly afflicts men over the age of 50 (I am 56).<\/p>\n The incidence of RBD rises steeply after 60, and especially after 80. People have active, aggressive dreams that may recur.<\/p>\n \u2018Normally people in REM sleep have no muscle tone, so they can\u2019t act out dreams,\u2019 explains Dr Irshaad Ebrahim, a psychiatrist at The London Sleep Centre.<\/p>\n \u2018But with RBD there is a fault with the \u201cswitch\u201d in your brain that turns off your muscles. It\u2019s quite common, affecting 1.3 per cent of men.\u2019<\/p>\n Exactly why this happens is a subject of research. The results of a large-scale study published in the journal Neurology in 2016 suggested that risk factors for RBD include having a history of head injury, high cholesterol, diabetes or pre-diabetes (a possible factor in my case, as my GP says I\u2019m borderline pre-diabetic).\u00a0<\/p>\n Diagnosing RBD involves referral to a sleep clinic for a polysomnogram, where the patient\u2019s brainwaves, breathing and muscle movements are monitored so doctors can identify the stage of sleep where the problem is occurring.<\/p>\n Such referrals are becoming more common: last year it was reported that the number of sleep disorder tests carried out by the NHS had doubled in a decade.<\/p>\n \u2018The first-line treatment is a sedative drug such as a benzodiazepine, usually prescribed for insomnia and anxiety, and muscle relaxants,\u2019 says Dr Quinnell.<\/p>\n \u2018People who have taken this medication say their dreams have \u201cslowed down\u201d.\u2019<\/p>\n Another medication that can help is melatonin, a natural hormone which plays a role in regulating sleep, and has been shown to lower muscle tone.<\/p>\n RBD can be an early sign of Parkinson\u2019s disease, which occurs as a result of a loss of nerve cells, reducing the brain\u2019s levels of the chemical dopamine, which is crucial to movement.<\/p>\n \u2018If RBD becomes regular, up to 80 per cent go on to develop Parkinson\u2019s,\u2019 says Dr Quinnell.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, actor Alan Alda, 82, \u2014 \u2018Hawkeye\u2019 Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H \u2014 revealed he had Parkinson\u2019s. He saw his doctor after reading an article which said if you act out your dreams, there is a good chance it might be an early symptom of the disease.<\/p>\n \u2018I was having a dream that someone was attacking me and I threw a sack of potatoes at them,\u2019 he said. \u2018But what I was really doing was throwing a pillow at my wife.\u2019<\/p>\n While RBD is linked with Parkinson\u2019s later in life, Parkinson\u2019s is also caused by environmental and genetic factors. As it doesn\u2019t run in my family, I am erring on the optimistic side.<\/p>\n As I write, though, there is a bruise on my forehead and a graze on one elbow. Because it happened again a few nights ago, this time with another football match scenario. If it is repeated much more, I will ask to be referred to a sleep specialist.<\/p>\n But for now, I\u2019ll just take my wife\u2019s advice, to try to avoid beer before bed, and my daughter\u2019s \u2014 move the bedside table.<\/p>\n And hope for the best.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We were three middle-aged men crossing a park at night. To our left were flats, around us a gloomy expanse of grass. We muttered angrily. Our path led us past some derelict, steel-shuttered public conveniences surrounded by bushes, where a group of teenage boys was lurking. They stepped out, barring our way. I aimed a Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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