Feeling of falling during sleep | Interesting to know | Keep it in mind You didn't sleep well last night, also your day was very stressful and busy. You drank a lot of coffee to clear your head and survive that busy day undamaged... In the evening, you lie down on your bed and choose a comfortable position, finally you can get a good night's sleep. Your brain has started to slow down.... You are just about to fall asleep, but what's wrong?! You suddenly woke up with a shocking feeling of falling!
It's a feeling as if you were stepping into the void, unaware of the last step of the stairs in front of you, or sitting in an airplane in turbulence… We know about this terrifying feeling, because it happened to us as well...
This weird experience is called hypnic jerk, or in other words, involuntary twitch . According to research by the Mayo Clinic, more than 70% of people experience this feeling immediately after falling asleep and relaxing their head. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine emphasizes the importance of a person's daily quality of life.
Sleep scientist Jason Ellis says that a sudden feeling of falling during sleep is caused by hypnic twitching.
The cause of a hypnic twitch is explained in two ways. The first hypothesis is more scientific, however the second hypothesis will cause much discussion...
The feeling of falling during sleep arises when our muscles involuntarily contract and shake us. This is the first assumption. Hiccups, for example, are involuntary muscle movements.
During sleep there are some changes in the functions of our body. In the first phase of sleep, the eyes move slowly and the effectiveness of the muscles decreases. The feeling of falling is mostly experienced in this very moment. It is believed that the feeling of falling is caused by the failure of the nerve cells in the arm and leg muscles to function properly during the transition between wakefulness and sleep.
A similar view is that it is a simple protective reflex. The brain perceives the decrease in muscle activity and muscle relaxation as if the body were actually falling. It sends a contraction message to the muscles so that the body can protect itself. So our brain lets us experience this less pleasant experience while it tries to protect us.
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Especially discomfort, stress, excessive caffeine consumption and going to bed exhausted, favour this experience. An Internet survey of 814 people showed that 38% of respondents experienced this event every day, 41% more than once a week and 21% rarely. All respondents experienced this at least once.
Now let's move on to the second and most interesting assumption:
The ancestors of our species Homo Sapiens did not live on the trees for about 4 million years, left the forests and gradually entered the country life. Even if it was a long time ago, our past on trees is not far from the point of view of evolutionary theory. Is it one of these genetic hereditary traits that has survived to this day?
Most of our ancestors lived on trees. A big advantage of living in a tree was the safety from predators on the ground, but the biggest danger was to fall. It is not only the loss of balance. At the same time, the fights between them provide enough reasons for one individual to push the other, or for primates to fall from the tree in a windy night.
A dormant primate had to pay constant attention to the danger of falling. However, this is not an easy task; already in sleep our body is half paralyzed, but the brain wants to keep it under constant control. For this very reason, it is assumed that at critical moments a neuronal circuit has developed in the brain that enables us to wake up by the stimulation of the body.
Because of our ancestors, we may still have this feature today as a hypnic twitch.
Keep in mind; the transition to sleep leads to muscle relaxation, reduction of breathing speed and body temperature. This sudden fall occurs when the brain loses control during muscle relaxation. The panicked and alarmed brain reduces the dangers of falling by contracting all our muscles. Thanks to our senses, which start working again after waking up, our brain quickly
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