It’s a nightmare; the only difference is you’re actually asleep during a nightmare. Sleep starts, or hypnic jerks, those abrupt, full-body jolts that fire off just as you finally drift off, ruin nights’ sleep before they even begin. According to a new study published in PLOS Mental Health by researchers at the University of Salzburg, these nighttime spasms are not only responsible for you kicking your partner, but research says that they are also taking a major psychological toll on you.
What sounds like a random, innocuous muscle twitch is actually a full-body jerk, often accompanied by the feeling of an electric shock or a blinding flash that lights up the inside of a sufferer’s head. Some even experience the terrifying sensation of suddenly plummeting into a bottomless void.
Their heart starts racing, and they go into a full-blown panic as they are suddenly jolted awake.
Why Your Body Suddenly Jerks Awake Just as You’re Falling Asleep, According to Science
For some, it’s a weekly or even daily occurrence, and you can imagine that it can drive them absolutely nuts. According to the research, frequent sufferers report heavily degraded sleep quality paired with spiked levels of depression and daytime anxiety.
The jolts create a climate of fear, where going to sleep becomes stressful as the sufferer worries about falling asleep, keeping their nervous system on high alert. That hyperarousal makes their brains misfire, causing their bodies to convulse in acute terror. Now they’re too panicked to rest, so they don’t get adequate sleep, which rolls over into more stress tomorrow.
Researchers note that emotional strain triggers episodes more directly than basic sleep deprivation. Doctors used to write off hypnic jerks as a harmless quirk of the body, but new data shows that they deserve to be taken a lot more seriously as a manifestation of severe cognitive hyperarousal, where the brain is basically so overwhelmed by the pressure to fall asleep, to even just relax, that it starts slamming a panic button.
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