Night Fights
I watched a live webinar this morning, presented by the Michael J Fox Foundation: “Night Fight with Parkinson’s: Acting Out Dreams, Insomnia and Other Sleep Issues.”
It was a typically excellent webinar put on by the Foundation. Much of what they discussed reinforced what I already knew. Parkinson’s non-motor symptoms can make it difficult to get a good night’s sleep. I take a mix of medications which are reasonably effective in getting a decent number of hours in, but they don’t guarantee a pleasant sleep.
REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder (RBD) was discussed. This was new terminology for me, but I have certainly experienced as have an estimated 80% of people with Parkinson’s. It is actually an early indicator of Parkinson’s.
Typically, when people dream there is a kind of switch that is turned off in your brain stem that shuts down the muscles in your body while you are in REM sleep. The only movement that takes place in “normal” people during this phase is the rapid movement of their eyes.
Because I have RBD, that switch doesn’t always get shut off. So, when I dream about fending someone or something off, I physically react by kicking, punching or jumping out of bed. The latter ends up being more of a collapse, because apparently in my dreams my legs don’t take gravity into account. As a result of these outbursts, my side table has been knocked flying on multiple occasions. Fortunately, I always lie on my side facing away from my wife, so it is the furniture that takes the punishment.
When the physical movement wakes me up (it is hard to stay asleep when punching a table), I find myself halfway into a dream and halfway into reality. It takes some difficult effort at times to come to grips with what is real. The dreams are typically very violent, and/or I am in a position of great risk.
The stress I feel on waking up suddenly can be so intense that it can stay with me through the day. The problem is, the more stressed I become the more likely I am to experience vivid dreams, and the more vivid dreams I have the more stressed I get. This is something I need to work on between sleeps.
It’s not the nightmares that are the culprit here. Apparently, we all have similar bad dreams, but if you aren’t physically acting them out and thereby waking yourself up, you don’t remember them. No harm, no foul.
So why the bad dreams? It could be that it our primitive brains are consolidating risks, so we can be ready for fight or flight. The brain has a negative bias. It is trained to keep you safe rather than happy. It is focused on avoiding trouble and survival.
Happiness is something we have to work on ourselves during the day no matter how anxious, annoyed, irritated or stressed we become.
On January 1 stI started a practice to recognize and capture my moments of happiness. At the end of each day I write down my most “beautiful moment” of that day. I got this idea from the book “Truth in Advertising” by John Kenney. As an example, one of the moments I selected was seeing my granddaughter smile for the first time. This helps bring the important things to the top of your brain’s inbox.
I find learning about how the brain works (or doesn’t) absolutely fascinating. It also makes me happy.
Always look on the bright side of life!
Originally published at https://shakeitupdotonline.wpcomstaging.com on January 22, 2021.
