Hallucinations when sleeping at night

Hallucinations when sleeping at night are actually closely related to physical condition. People with relatively weak physical constitutions are prone to fainting and are more likely to have hallucinations. The best way is to strengthen physical exercise and get more sun exposure to enhance the body's positive energy and physical fitness, which will reduce such hallucinations. You should also pay attention to whether this situation occurs during the day. If so, you need to go to the hospital for treatment. This article introduces the situation of hallucinations before going to bed.

A concept explanation

A hallucination experience that occurs during the transition from wakefulness to sleep. Most of the symptoms are hallucinations, such as seeing images of people, flowers, birds, mountains, rivers or animals, which are similar to dream experiences. It can occasionally be seen in normal people; it is more common in mental patients, such as mental disorders caused by alcohol poisoning or schizophrenia. This type of hallucination occurs before falling asleep. The patient can see hallucinatory images when closing his eyes. Most of them are visual hallucinations, such as various animals, landscapes, and individual parts of the human body. It is similar to the experience of dreaming. [1]

People who have hallucinations before falling asleep should pay attention to getting more rest and taking more vitamin B12 and vitamin C.

Supplement: Hallucinations before falling asleep are common in schizophrenia, but a few normal people also have this symptom.

2. Horrible hypnagogic hallucinations

Hypnagogic hallucinations refer to terrifying hallucinations or dream-like experiences that occur before falling asleep (transition from wakefulness to sleep), such as vivid sensory experiences such as vision, touch, movement, and hearing, or dreams similar to those occurring during sleep. The hallucinations described by the patient are more terrifying than ordinary dreams and are sometimes difficult to distinguish, so they are also called hypnagogic nightmares. The onset of this disease is not related to age. It is very rare in the general population, has no gender difference, and often has a chronic onset. However, it is not uncommon for this disease to occur during the acute recovery period after REM sleep deprivation or suppression, and it may occur in 12% to 50% of patients with narcolepsy. Some physical diseases, such as brain degenerative diseases, dementia, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, etc., can also cause nightmares or hallucinations, but they are not discussed in this section.

3. Identification of manifestations

1. Normal hypnagogic hallucinations

Normal people may also experience hallucinations before falling asleep, but they occur at the beginning of the first stage of NREM sleep rather than in REM sleep. There are no nightmares or anxiety, and it does not affect the quality of sleep, and severe terror states rarely occur.

2. Sleep paralysis

Patients with sleep paralysis often experience an inability to move their entire body and muscle paralysis that lasts for several seconds to several minutes, which can be used for identification. Polysomnography showed characteristic changes such as skeletal muscle tension suppression and REM sleep abnormalities. Sleep paralysis may also occur with terrifying hypnagogic hallucinations.

3. Nightmare

It often occurs in the second half of the night, during the rapid eye movement sleep period, rather than before falling asleep. The symptoms of nightmares are basically similar to those of terrifying hypnagogic hallucinations, but the latter are more severe.

4. Sleep terrors

Symptoms of sleep terrors often occur during the first 1/3 of slow-wave sleep at night, rather than at the beginning of the night. Sudden, intense attacks of fear occur during sleep and the patient may partially or completely forget the attack. Polysomnography shows that it occurs in NREM stage 3-4 or is often accompanied by symptoms of increased autonomic nervous function activity, such as tachycardia.