Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with shortness of breath. Then when I get up, it’s over. It happens a few times a year, never during the day, and it’s very scary.
Joris Bartstra, journalist with medical diploma
Your complaint most closely resembles a form of ‘sleep paralysis’. When you dream, you are in a phase of sleep called REM sleep because of the rapid eye movements that are made (Rapid Eye Movements). During REM sleep, the skeletal muscles are actively paralyzed by the brain to prevent you from doing anything from your dream. When you wake up from REM sleep, that ‘paralysis’ sometimes continues for a while: you feel limp, unsteady on your feet, sleep-drunk. Sometimes you feel the paralysis. For example, in a nightmare where you want to run away but can’t move.
I myself sometimes dream that I participate in a running event but can only crawl. I think this short-lived feeling that the body isn’t doing what you want it to translate to for you as the feeling of being unable to breathe for a while. Sleep paralysis arises on the border of waking and sleeping; it’s a kind of dreaming where you wake up. If you know it, it doesn’t have to be so scary anymore.
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