My Hypothesis For Sleep Paralysis

I may have the answer for what causes it

Sleep paralysis is one of those interesting phenomena most people tend to read about. If it happens to you, it is a terrifying experience, a fear akin to being awake during a surgical procedure. I’ve had this experience on rare occassions.

You feel ‘trapped’ in your body. You cannot speak. You may, with great difficulty, just barely open your eyelids to groggily comprehend a blurry image of the real world. A red LED alarm clock was by my bedside, and it was like a blurry, warped Dali (likely due to the eye lenses not focusing).

I got the unpleasant experience of watching this clock not change for seemingly forever. A minute will past by like it is ten minutes, but feels like an hour. During this state your body is still trying to dream. You will hear noises, see things that aren’t there.

I heard the pages of a newspaper being turned and read from a location that wasn’t physically possible on one occassion - inside a wall. I heard a rustling plastic bag on another when I couldn’t even open my eyes. A primodal fear that someone is right behind you about to kill you in your sleep arises.

The Hunt For What Causes It

I am a researcher by heart, so when it occurred to me - rarely - I took issue with the horrible experience and decided to study it. I already knew sleep researchers barely understood the phonemena and internet commentators mentioned myth and lore. So I knew this was going to have to be custom research.

For me, the first clue was the fact for me it was extremely rare, but for others it was common. I figured something I was doing that was rare or unusual was the trigger, or increased the probability. I had no data for triggers on the first two events, but a lot of data of what goes on during it.

It struck me keenly that the part of your brain that signals to ‘wake up’ does not work during sleep paralysis. I found if I mentally screamed “wake up” inside my head, what would happen is my mind would do something unusual - the semi-awake state would go back to sleeping, then it’d go to a fully awake state.

On three separate occassions of sleep paralysis I tested the mental screaming of ‘wake up’, and in every instance, my eyes would close, my brain would shift back into sleep, then shift back into fully awake. Like a gear change in a car, essentially the gears were grinding. It could not immediately go from semi-awake to fully-awake. It had to exit the grinding gear, and re-apply the gear change, and then change down a gear.

Essentially, what this tells me is I was in a stage of ‘errored’ sleep: my mind thinks it is still asleep.

What Causes The Error?

The second clue on what causes the error was working out why I couldn’t exhibit control. When asleep, the body - normally - suppresses bodily movement to stop you injuring and harming yourself. As this state does not count as ‘awake’, the system suppressing bodily movement still applies. It will actively resist anything you do.

The system, however, does not suppress thoughts, so anything thought related is fair game. I do lucid dream, and I find mentally yelling ‘wake up’ will wake you up from everything, including dreams, nightmares and even sleep paralysis.

The system that suppresses bodily movement is clearly not getting a signal that you’re ‘awake’ and thus neglects to return control until you “properly” wake up. Essentially, what is happening is part of your brain is awake, and the other part is asleep.

The question becomes, which and which?

A Clue In Sleeping Position

I did notice something else: I could replicate sleep paralysis with a roughly 50% chance of success.

After my third and fourth events I finally had a clue, when a particular sleeping position I took made me feel like I was falling and turned into a nightmare, where, during that nightmare, I couldn’t move.

Although I was asleep and did not suffer sleep paralysis, knowing that sleep paralysis is ‘being asleep but in a different gear’, the feeling of being unable to move in the dream was part of that sleep paralysis spectrum.

My sleeping position was face-up.

See, normally - and I imagine this is what a lot of people do - I sleep either on my left side or my right side. But sometimes, such as when you have tooth pain or a headache or something that stops you sleeping on either side, you sleep facing upwards.

I intentionally repeated sleeping facing upwards, and not only did I have a harder time getting to sleep, but when I got to sleep, I had a higher probability of feeling like I was falling, which in turn had a higher probability of being a nightmare, which in turn had a higher probability of feeling paralysed in the nightmare and wanting to wake up.

Night Movement And Blood Pressure

Now, you might be wondering why sleeping face up sometimes causes sleep paralysis, and not always, and also you might be wondering why, on rare occassions, you might be sleeping on your side and still get sleep paralysis?

Well, firstly, sleeping position isn’t static. So it is conceiveable that on rare occassions that even if you sleep left or right side, you will eventually be sleeping facing up. However doing so is unlikely because the head facing up is top heavy, and naturally wants to fall one way or another (generating that sense of falling).

There may be some people who sleep always facing up who never get the issue, and in my case, it was still only 50/50, and very difficult to do as often my body would naturally want to tilt left or right. Also there’s pillows and pillow height. The other factor, of course, is blood pressure.

Your blood in your brain is not static. There is more oxygenated blood at the parts lower to the centre of gravity than higher. Blood pressure will dictate how much a person gets. Mine is naturally absurdly low.

If you have low blood pressure and suddenly get up, you will feel dizzy and feel unable to focus. Inversely, if you’ve ever been upside down, you can feel the blood pressure rushing to your head. Similarly applies here.

When sleeping sideways, your front and back are on the same level, regardless of which side you’re sleeping on. There might be a hemisphere bias, but your front and back will get equal amounts of blood supply.

With your face up, there’s more blood for the back of your brain - the part that handles subconscious and autonomic action, such as disabling your ability to move - and less for the front part - that handles executive functions and overriding subconscious actions.

Dysexecutive Syndrome

Dysexecutive syndrome is where you have an inability to make decisions, choices and the like. It is classically associated with frontal brain damage. Essentially, it is damage to the executive (thinking) portions.

Now, obviously, people who have sleep paralysis haven’t had sudden brain damage. But the reduction in blood flow to the frontal portions of the brain means the executive system hasn’t got as much energy and thus has a harder time overriding the subconscious, autonomic systems further at the back.

This model aligns nicely with the observed behaviours. Conscious cognitive abilities struggling to override the subconscious abilities resulting in paralysis that can only be ‘stopped’ by appealing to the subconscious with mental calls of ‘wake up’.

People with a loss of blood to the brain - namely, fighter pilots experiencing many gravities of force - will pass out, losing consciousness. Whilst the reduction of blood to the frontal lobe isn’t complete or total like in a ‘black out’ scenario, it is likely a combination of low blood pressure and facing upwards means there is a drop in available blood to the frontal lobe, resulting in the half-and-half situation of brain functionality.

The Hemispheres Have It

Building on this ‘gravity blood flow impacts sleep’ theory further, I also opted to study what sort of dreams I had depending on which side I was sleeping on. If facing upright had an impact and deprived small amounts of blood from the frontal lobe, what about the hemispheres, given the same issue should apply there?

I found a rough correlation, although not exact - likely due to body movement - that sleeping on my left gave me more creative, interpretive dreams that were ‘weirder’, and that sleeping on my right gave me more mundane, logical, day-to-day sort of dreams.

This is counter-intuitive, because the left hemisphere is classically associated with logic, and the right-side with creativity and originality. And yet, when it came to sleeping position, the inverse experience appears to be occurring.

One possibility is my hemispheres - like known medical cases of organ positions being mirrored - are swapped around. The other possibility is that the hemisphere with less blood is ‘more awake’ than the portion with sufficient blood flow, and thus remains somewhat active during sleep.

Some questions remain unanswered, but the blood flow hypothesis is my best explanation for the sleep paralysis being currently experienced by people. It would benefit from additional anecdotal observations - as well as blood pressure readings - from both sufferers and non-sufferers to confirm or deny the hypothesis.

Not the most important story, but I wanted to share in the hopes it gives a researcher an “aha!” moment for treating people’s insomnia and other sleep issues.

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