These Creepy Gifs Will Make Sleep Disorders Seem A Whole Lot Worse To You
Sleep disorders, like most disorders, are extremely difficult for those without them to understand what they're like and just how they affect a person. Unfortunately, they're just as confounding for those with them.
To help both sides better understand sleep disorders, artists Petra Svajger and Maja Poljanc explored the psychology of disrupted sleep and found a way to better depict sleep disorders, in a series called PARASOMNIAs.
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Something those with sleep disorders seldom, if ever experience, REM sleep is the deepest stage of sleep - also known as "dream sleep." Many with severe sleep disorders rarely get to enjoy the pleasures of REM sleep, and therefore, also rarely dream.
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A transitional stage between sleep and wakefulness, 'sleep paralysis' causes its victims to be both cognizant and still partially asleep. Often times, this state of "half-wakefulness" is accompanied by hallucinations, or continuations of dreams - or, more commonly, nightmares.
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Possibly the most well-known sleep disorder, Insomnia can simply be characterized by the inability to fall and/or stay asleep. Regardless of how physically exhausted a sufferer is, falling asleep can sometimes feel impossible - and sometimes, it is.
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'Sleep eating' is easily one of the more bizarre known sleep disorders, and requires little, if any explanation. Essentially, it's sleep walking with eating added on. And yes, there is a serious downside to it - sufferers wind up with things like teeth problems and halitosis.
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Possibly the most interesting of the group, 'Restless Leg Syndrome' is a disfunction of the nervous system that causes one's legs to move involuntarily, often disrupting sleep multiple times a night. Because of this, RLS sufferers associate very few, if any positive thoughts with sleep.