August 1, 2016 • 50 mins
Night terrors, an uncommon sleep disorder, happen when the brain doesn't transition correctly to deep sleep. The result is terrifying, with the sufferer genuinely terrified, swatting at invisible attackers, and screaming for help - all while sound asleep.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode of Stuff You Should Know is sponsored by Squarespace.
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website apart. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House
Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(00:27):
I'm Josh Clark, and there's childs to be Chuck Bryant,
and there's Yep, there's Jerry. Uh. This is Stuff you
Should Know the podcast. Uh, we are in our deep
freeze chamber. Yeah, it's a little cold in here. It's
freezing and I'm never freezing. No, I don't know what's
going on. Yeah, Like I just video producer Casey just
(00:50):
pushed a big rack of frozen beef carcasses by So
I think they're moonlighting, you know, is a is a
beef carcass freezer the butcher. When I said I don't
know it's going on, I meant literally, I'm confused from
hypothermia setting in facting my brain. You're just generally confused
(01:10):
about everything. Yeah, well, it's it's cold, cold as age,
cold as heck. Chuck, Yes, have you my friend ever
had what's commonly referred to as a night terror. Um,
are you referring to a sleep terror or pavoor nocturnus
(01:31):
or axis one colon three oh seven point four six,
or uh possession by a demon? No? I don't think so.
I haven't either. I would probably remember, I would think
as a child having these, although not necessarily unless your
mom or dad said, hey, there's something really wrong with
(01:52):
your kid, well, it would have been a thing. In
other words, right, yeah, because yeah, that's a good point.
It's gonna say thank goodness that we didn't have that,
but really thank goodness for our family, because when you
have a night teror sleep tear, you typically aren't capable
of forming any kind of memory of the event, certainly
of anything that's driving you crazy with fear. Yeah, you
(02:14):
wake up, you're surrounded by your entire family who's like
sweating bullets with looks of terror on their faces, shaking,
and you're like, what's what's going on? Yeah? Where the pancakes?
I was gonna say twinkies? But yeah, did you eat
twinkies for breakfast as a child? Well? No, I kind
of more imagine this happening at like two in the morning.
Got you. You know, nobody wants to cook being grabbed
(02:35):
twinkie pretty easy, I bet what would be good since
I recently invented the recy cat, all right, and people
actually ate them. Um, take a twinkie, get a pan
hot oh yeah, spray it with some or even better,
get some get a stick of butter and run it
over the pan, and then get one of those bacon
(02:57):
grill presses and then small two twinkies down. I don't
know if you should do that last part and griddle
them up nice and crispy. Okay, wow, yeah, maybe you
should do whether they're really golden brown and not just
fake golden brown. Man, that'd be good. You know. I
quit ultra processed foods, but I might try that. Actually, yeah,
(03:19):
I mean I'm joking. Of course I would never do that.
I had a twinkie and I think I ate one
for that episode. But I don't think I've had too
many sense then either. But that sounds good. Well, you
just said a crisp, buttery twinkie, and it does sound
kind of good. That's what stinks about having extra pounds,
as people probably say, yeah, chuck to seat twinkies all day. Well,
(03:42):
they call you twinkie behind your back. I don't fried
chicken all day, that's my problem. Oh yeah, yeah, fried
chicken will do it. But it can really be worth
it depending on the fried chicken to be raised in
the South. Where's the best place around here? Well, some
of the grocery stores around here have great fried chicken
in their deli. Really, yeah, that's my like, I don't
(04:02):
go to like fast food fried chicken. Oh yeah, no,
I'm I'm not surprised about that, but I figured you'd
say something like Mary Max or something like that. Occasionally
at a at a nice restaurant that has, you know,
over priced fried chicken, I'll try it. Mary Max is
good pretty much across the board with everything. Yeah, it's
ever had their um mint julip. No, it is so tasty, huge,
(04:27):
that is it. Yes, it's just great. Well that's because
they have to satisfy the aging alcoholics that go there
for lunch drinks. Mary max Tea Room is in Atlanta,
by the way. Oh yeah, everybody knows. It's a classic
old school Southern restaurant. But but you know, it's a
team room, so it's supposed to be a little nicer.
It's not like a meat and three right exactly, but yeah, yeah,
(04:49):
and uh Mary Max is also very famous for Mary
Mack having suffered night terrors as child. Yeah. See, people
thought we were on a tangent. Nope, not true. No,
that was all all written out. So night terrors. I
have never had them that I know of. I did
recount my sleep walking, uh episode in our sleepwalking episode.
(05:12):
Well put and by the way, we did sleepwalking is
science phasing out sleep? October? Is sleep that important? September two, Robust,
thirteen minute episode Sleepwalking August? Is there a disease that
kills us by preventing sleep? October? And that's it? What
(05:33):
about lucid dreaming? Okay? Yeah, sure? And then but I
typed in sleep as the keyword, so it didn't come up.
I think there's a couple more even that a dreams
would have brought up a few more than you're right. Yeah.
So anyway, if people want to hear everything, we know,
sleep sweet, the sleep sweet, that's it. Um. But yeah,
(05:54):
we haven't done. Oh and then by this time we'll
have done. Uh. What was the one we just recorded
about sleep? Gettysburg address It was a paras omnia too.
Oh geez man, we just recorded. It hasn't even been
released at this moment. You know what I'm talking about,
all right? Yeah, but you put me on the spot,
so I can't think of anything. I can't either put
(06:15):
both of us. It'll be added to the sleep suite eventually.
And here's another contribution. So we're talking night tears. Like
you said, there's some other terms for it. Apparently, if
you're serious about researching night tears, you call him sleep tears.
Because this was pointed out by a couple of pedantic sites.
That can happen anytime you sleep, if you take a
nap during the day, you can suffer one of them.
(06:36):
So you really shouldn't call him night tears. Yeah, if
you're one of those six year olds that works the
late shift and he's sleep all day long, that is
severely pedantic. But that's I was being unfair because adults
can get them, although it's uh much more common in children.
Let's just say between four and twelve. The best number
(06:58):
we have is about six six. Um, there is one.
I don't even know about this one. One study said,
but I think we should just throw that out the door,
because nowhere else did I see that. Yeah, there's a, Oh, really,
you didn't see that one. No, No, I didn't. I
mostly saw about around somewhere around six percent of kids
(07:20):
from anywhere between two and a half to twelve years
of age UM typically will suffer night terrors. And there's
like you're going to find out that there very few
things that are known about night terrors sleep tears. UM,
there's like tantalizing clues here there, but no one's ever
sat down and really like connected the dots. There's nobody.
(07:43):
There is virtually no sleep terror researcher that I came across.
I came across a few academics talking about it, and
there've been like apparently a few studies or whatever, but
there doesn't seem to be anybody who's focused on night tares.
Which is really strange to me because if you do
kind of start doing research about night tears, you find
(08:04):
that there is a lot of anxiety among parents. For sure.
This would help a lot of people, a lot of
families who are disturbed by this. Well, I can't imagine
being a parent and having your kid like, I mean,
it's not a nightmare. We're going to make the distinction
over and over. It's it's different it happens in a
different time, which we'll get to during sleep, but it
(08:25):
is uh, it is terror, like hyperventilating and your heart
rate is increased, your your eyes might be opening. You're
still asleep. You talk about terrifying and your people will dilate.
That's the stuff of nightmares, Like you've got the fight
or flight response going on. That's while you're asleep and
can't have your eyes upen Could you imagine anything more creepy?
(08:49):
Oh no, that's that's very creepy. Well, that's that's part
of the problem. I think that's one of the things,
not just being woken up by your kid having a
night tearor um. The fact that they're moving around like
they're scared to death, but there's nothing and they're like
walking around. They're like pushing you out of the way.
They're they're they're interacting with the world as if they're
(09:11):
awake and scared out of their minds. But you can't
connect with them, you can't console them because they're asleep.
They're not actually interacting with you. They're not hearing your
reassurances because they're not awake right now. They're in another world,
the world of sleep. It's really bizarre. Are you sure
they can't hear? Yeah, you have to wake them up,
(09:33):
and you're not supposed to do that. Secondly, but they're
not there. They're they're they're physically and they're acting like
they're they're they're not there, so you're they're literally inconsolable
at that point while they're having a night tare So Yeah,
for a parent and this is your little two or
three year old kid suffering this, you can't do anything
about it. You just have to wait for it to
(09:54):
go away. And these things can last up to like
twenty minutes, and there's nothing you can do aside from
keeping them from harming themselves. Yeah. Plus that means you're
awake for twenty minutes when you you should be sleeping,
just pounding twinkies. Uh. Gender wise, boys and girls get
it about the same, so it's really no difference. And um,
(10:17):
it's not like menstruation as no gender specific specific as
far as I know, we haven't done an episode on
that specifically. Though. We did female puberty. That that's that's enough?
Is that all? Yeah? We did male puberty and female puberty.
No more. I shouldn't have even brought it up. Um,
(10:38):
so gender doesn't matter. And um, they typically tail off
after you're a little kid, but you can't get them
as adults. And they say, after sixty five years old,
you were almost certain to not have a sleep terror.
And I just assume it's because nothing scares you at
that point. You've seen it all teenagers. Yea, the you're
(11:00):
you're impending death in teenagers, um, which probably reminds you
of your impending death. Really the world changing and all that. Um, Yeah,
there's a clue right there. Over sixty five night terrors
are almost unheard of. Another little tranche of life where
they're very much unheard of his adolescence. So you might
(11:22):
have them, um, when you're prepubescent, and then they go
away during adolescence, then they might pick up again as
an adult. Um. You know what's going on there. It
seems to be as far as like the very few
people who are thinking about this stuff, there seems to
be some sort of agreement that it has to do
(11:42):
especially in children with the developing central nervous system. You
know what, that's a great place for us to take
a break, so I can go look up what central
nervous system means. All right, you said, central nervous system,
(12:22):
and um, you know what it means. I do. I
went and looked it up. This descending string of nerves
that goes down from your brain and hangs down over
your body. That's right, I think like a marry net. Yeah,
it is very much like that. Um. So wow, that
was a great analogy. Actually, he just blew my mind.
(12:45):
Thank you. So you just tease before we left about
having to do with the central nervous system. Um, apparently
our our CNS matures up until the age of about
do you know what CNS means? Central nervous is right? Um,
but I was kind of surprised at I was shocked
at that was that late. Apparently it's a fairly recent
(13:08):
finding relief among science that it used to be you
know eight, you know, end of puberty. Um, Nope. Supposedly
now they believe the CNS keeps going and developing until uh, well,
we should talk a little bit about sleep. I know
we covered this in that awesome thirteen minute episode How
(13:30):
Sleep Works. Yeah, just the stages of sleep. Yeah, it
seems like this was better explained than our entire thirteen
minute episode. Yeah, and that we talked about in the
Dreams Episode two, And we had a TV episode of
our Science Channel show called Night Terror. Yeah, poor Kent
clinking Beard slept, walked, you had sleep back me all
(13:51):
sorts of terrible stuff. That was a fun episode. That
was um and and there's even a continuity mistake in
that episode if you remember probably several um did you know?
Our first three episodes are up on YouTube in full.
I think somebody actually sat there with their phone and
recorded it on their computer and then posted it to YouTube.
(14:12):
Now is it the real first episode? Meaning the pilot
that was the eleventh episode was the one that they
aired first. It was actually episode two, but it was
called episode one, wasn't it? All I know is coffee? Coffee?
But that was the first one, wasn't it? That was
episode one? It wasn't episode two? Yeah, that was the pilot.
(14:33):
The pilot was episode eleven. Yeah, but that was totally
different format. No, the pilot remember it was broken up
between body dysmorphic disorder and zombies. Oh no, no, no, no,
that's the pilot now, that wasn't it was? That was
the That was what we shot as proof of concept
that they ended up airing as the pilot. They call
(14:54):
it pilos where but the pilot episode of the real
show when we actually we're in a different location was
was Coffee Bought? Which they aired I guess tenth coffee
about air first? No, it didn't really, Yeah, that was
the rub Man. It's like, why would you air the
pilot last? Well, we aired the pilot last twice because
(15:18):
they showed the proof of concept one at the end. Right, Yeah,
they hated the show so much they decided to air
one extra episode. Oh man, what a rabbit hole that
was so uh talk about it. Yeah, this this article
here says we spent about a third of our lives
(15:39):
in deep sleep. Well that's not true, just sleeping and um,
that's true. Well it depends on the person, of course. Sure, yeah,
I guess that's true. I equate that with this sitting
at red lights thing. I've always been suspicious of that, Like,
it depends on where you are, spend how much you drive? Yeah,
x number of days at a red light. Yeah, these
are broad uh percentages, I think. Yeah, Um, I have
(16:01):
a friend that is so like that. I think started
worrying about his death early on in life and trained
himself to get as little asleep as possible so he
could do more. Oh that's neat and dude, since I've
known him in the in his early twenties, has been
getting like five hours or less sleep at night and
(16:22):
it's good. He's good with that too. Um, he should
listen to that is Science Phasing out sleep episode because
it was remember a lot about pills that help you, um,
stay up for forty eight hours and then just sleep
for the normal like eight. He didn't eat pills, he
just trained himself high. Yeah that's pretty interesting. Um. All right,
(16:42):
so when we go to shweepy time. Uh, there's something
called a dinner scene ADNNI sign a chemical that starts
to build up in your body, your brain, your brain,
right yeah, yeah, Oh, it's a neurotransmitter and at the
very least as present in your brain. I don't know
if it's manufactured there. You know, a lot of your serotonine,
(17:04):
like a tremendous amount of your serotonin is actually producing
your gut. That that doesn't surprise me. It was surprising
to me the first time I heard it because you
think it's a brain. It's a new transmitter, so obviously
the brains can generate Nope, most of it's in your gut. No,
I mean, I guess it didn't surprise me, and that
I know that a lot of healthy gut um life
(17:24):
life like a healthy gut can affect way more parts
of your life there, just like digestion. Um. So anyway, um,
that builds up the adenna scene and then uh, serotonin,
like you mentioned that goes to the brain and says,
all right, let's shut it down for the night. Shut
it down, everybody. You don't have to go home, but
you can't stay here exactly. Then they play Rick Astley
(17:46):
on the loudspeaker. Oh, is that what they do to
get people out? Well, every bar has her own song. Okay,
is Rick Astley go to though? You think I could
see it? Yeah? I used to play at Mexicali Grill
in college. I would play when we had the the
Eek fraternity big groups on the deck late at night.
I would play Public Enemy really loud. Oh yeah, And
(18:07):
they didn't like it, I'm sure, and we loved it.
Drove him out and they went back to the fraternity
house and did whatever they do there. Watch Dr Quinn
medicine woman. Is that what they're doing there? Is a
great letterman top I used to have this book of
Letterman Top ten lists from the nineties. Probably a third
(18:31):
of the jokes that I've said on this show really
are like rooted in that book, and that was one
of them. It was like top ten signs You're in
a bad fraternity. It was like, every Saturday Night is
Dr Quinn Medicine Woman Night? Your your secret fraternity handshake
consists of quietly holding hands for long periods of time.
Zee mckagar's I think Dr Quinn Medicine Woman is probably
(18:54):
top five least cool shows of all time. You know, yeah,
murder she wrote this up there. Okay, fine, it's not cool.
I watched that show at least once a week. Still,
I love that show. Where do you find it on Netflix? Yah?
I think it's probably on Amazon Prime. Do you really
watch that? I really genuinely like in in a totally
(19:16):
non ironic way. Well, Angela Lansbury is pretty sexy. I
don't know about that, but it's just it's a cozy
little show, especially you know, she travels abroad and and
goes to Europe and in New York A lot those
episodes are like so so for me. The ones that
are set in Cabot Cove and there's like a storm
and a murderer Maine. I think. Um, so it's like
(19:40):
a quiet little town and you know, something happens and
it's just like a cozy show. You can't can't stand it.
And it's not like she doesn't like the show itself,
it's just like, um, Angela Lansbury is such like a
schoolmarm to her. She always feels like she's in trouble.
Now on the background, Yeah, that's funny. So she's not
(20:02):
a big murder she wrote fan Uh did she just
walk through when it's on and be like, stop telling
me what to do? Angela? No, I won't go to
my room. Um, all right, so where are we were
falling asleep because the because Murder she wrote on because
Murder she wrotes on. And then we enter stage one
of five four h five, well technically five yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah,
(20:30):
so there's four stages and then a fifth an encore.
Yeah I guess yeah, it doesn't isn't considered a stage,
it's its own thing. Well. Stage one is when you're
you're sort of in that place where if things are
all good and you're not super anxious, don't have a
lot of anxiety. It's nice and quiet, it's dark. Um,
that means you're heading into sleep. If things are not great,
(20:54):
or you're anxious, or something's disturbing you, you could fall
back awake from stage one, that tenuous period. Stage one. Yeah,
that is stage one. If you have a book, you're
going to sleep in stage one. That's right. It was
exploding head syndrome. That was the one. So you go
on to stage two, start drifting off, and this is
(21:17):
apparently where you spend a lot of your sleep time,
although I don't know that this is necessarily true, but
your your brain waves start to take on a different form.
I think they go from alpha to maybe beta. Okay,
they're slowing down a little bit, you're calmed down, you're
not thinking quite as much. Um, your eye movement stops,
and you're just basically in that twilight period where you're
(21:42):
you're basically sleepy, but you could be awakened fairly easily
until you get the stage three. Yeah, that's when things
get real. That's when. Um. These there's something called delta waves,
and they were discovered by a guy named W. Gray
Walter the nineteen hundreds who was very gracious not to
insist that they're called alter waves. Totally would have He's like,
(22:02):
go with delta Uh. They operate between zero and four hurts,
and those delta waves are what makes they're They're responsible
for the restorative aspect of sleep, like when you wake
up and you feel great and refreshed, say thank you
delta waves. And um that doctor I guess he was
a doctor, doctor Walter Um. He was a student of Hanburger.
(22:29):
Hansburger mhm man. That's close. It's so so you shouldn't
name your kid Hansburger. Uh. Hansburger Uh invented the E
E G machine, and then Gray went on to make
that machine a little bit better. He improved upon it,
which is what allowed him to discover these knobs are ugly.
I'm gonna place him with orange. One looks old. So
(22:53):
that allowed him to discover the delta waves, which are great.
Those those are that's those are my favorite brainway. Yeah.
Even the name delta waves just sounds very soothing to me.
Del to right. So you're in did you say stage
four or three? That's things get cranking up in three
and by the time you're at four, it's all delta
(23:15):
waste and and like you said, that's where you get
that RESTful sleep because this is where tissue regeneration and
repair takes place. Your brain is shut down, like your
your executive function is turned off. You're not thinking, you're
not judging, you're not chewing over like all the stupid
things that you said wrong and how you could have
(23:35):
said them better that day, none of that's going on. Um,
you're just kind of out like a light. But your
motor strip is still conceivably active, it can be UM,
and your emotional centers are able to be activated as well.
For the most part, they're not. You're just out right right.
Then after stage four you totally shift gears and you
(24:00):
enter R E M sleep. So the first four stages
are non r E M sleep, and then you enter
R E M sleep rapid eye movement sleep, and it's
called that because your eyes just go nuts so all
over the place. The rest of your body is paralyzed,
and your brain turns back on and starts producing producing
the same brain waves alpha waves that you have when
you're awake. So you're thinking, you're dreaming, you're doing all
(24:21):
this stuff, but your body is paralyzed, right, and then
the whole thing starts over again. After about ninety minutes,
you go back into stage one sleep. Okay, yeah, and
whatever you do during R A M Sleep, don't go
back to Rockville. It's terrible. What's funny is I think
you make that joke every time we talk about the
(24:41):
stages of sleep. Well, I do, but it's a different
song every time. Okay, Yeah, it's just a bad r
M reference. You're right. I just feel like I have
to I'm with you, I'm with you someone. I wish
someone would send us a list of my dumb R
E M jokes from all of our very sleep people.
Don't waste your lives, yeah's yours? Go volunteer for a
charity instead. So um, the whole that whole cycle between
(25:05):
the four stages and R E M Sleep takes about
ninety minutes, and then through about the first half of
say you're say you're getting a good eight hours. First
four hours, those first four stages are going to take
up most of that ninety minutes to ten minutes, and
R E M is going to be less. And then
about halfway through your R E M is gonna start
getting longer and longer. In the cycle. Right, So the
(25:27):
second half of your sleep you're dreaming more. But again
it's the important point here is during stage three and four,
you're not dreaming. You're just out like a light. Yeah,
and I guess that what you just said before that
explains why I often feel like I, um remember my
dreams or dream heavier towards my waking hours. Yeah. Well. Plus, also,
(25:51):
if you are in R. A E. M sleep and
you awaken from it rather than awakening during one of
your other sleep cycles, you're going to remember your dream
because you're you're regaining consciousness, you're awakening. But again, your
brain has been on the whole time. You're just becoming
aware of what you were just thinking. So you're gonna
be able to form those memories when you're sleeping in
(26:13):
say stage three or four. Is we'll see you don't
form memories because your brain is not working like that. Yeah.
I probably asked you this in one of our dreamcasts.
But are you able to pick up a dream after
you've woken up and and it's something you want to
you know, resolve or keep doing? Not really, I've gotten
pretty good at that, have you. That's pretty neat? Yeah,
(26:33):
I don't it's not quite dream sailing like we talked about, um,
but I definitely like it happened this week. I was
having a dream that was great, and I woke up,
went and used the bathroom sitting down so I don't
wake up enough. And then I was like, all right,
and I just like think about nothing but that as
I go back to sleep. Okay, where was I? Yeah,
(26:53):
I got right back in it. That's awesome, man, that's
pretty neat. But I'm still not which is the one
where you control the dream? Is that dreaming? I wouldn't
say that. I'm that's where you're like, and now I'm
going to fly watch this and then you fly in
your dream. Can't do that, all right? So those are
the stages. Good extra info there by the way, I
didn't know that about the varying time cycle as you sleep.
(27:18):
I thought it was sort of all equal. I bring it,
you do bring it. Um. So what they do know
about night terrors or sleep terrors is between three and
four stages. Three and four is when this is happening. Yes,
in other words, it part of it has to do
with this transition that happens between the stages. They just
(27:42):
don't know exactly why. No, And it doesn't really make
sense because both stages three and four are considered deep sleep.
It's just deep sleep and super deep sleep. It's something
during that transition can cause night terrors. Yeah, and the nightmares.
I don't know if we fully said this. Nightmares occur
only during R E. M sleep, but uh, that's one
(28:04):
distinguishing factor from night terrors, and the fact that you
can you know, you can remember a nightmare. I can't
remember a night terror. Nope. You wake up and you
might still feel fearful for some reason, but you you
don't wake up and say, there was a beast in
my room trying to kill me. It's kind of like
how when you're watching Law and Order and you're like
(28:25):
super into it and like you just hate the murderer
in this episode, and then on comes like um, like
a Sharman ad and you're like this, why do I
feel so like mad? And then you realize, oh, it's
because I'm still keyed up from Law and Order. Same
thing with the night tear, Like you don't remember why
you're fearful, you just feel fearful. Still, it hasn't subsided.
(28:48):
I've never seen that show, but I was hanging in there.
You've never seen Law and Order? Huh, No, that is
not possible. I don't watch many major network TV shows.
Law and Order has been on for like twenty years,
and you've never seen a Law and Order. No, they're
missing out. I've never seen cs. I've never seen any
of those shows. That's fine, you're missing out a little bit.
(29:08):
With lawn Or, it's a really great procedural cop drama.
Now that's the one with Len that had Jerry or
back right, Lenny who? I love that guy. He's great,
But he's not the only one that's great. Like virtually
every single person who's been on this rotating cast has
done a great job. Didn't say by the Bell guy
get on there? Or was that another back? Yeah? Didn't he?
(29:31):
Eventually he was on one of those procedurals. He was
on a lawyer procedural with one of the guys from Clueless.
Really yeah, the skateboarder from Clueless. What? Yeah? They were
like goofy lawyers. Oh no, no, no, that's a different one.
I know you're talking about that. I don't. I don't
(29:51):
know if Zach was ever a cop. Oh no, I'm
thinking of Ricky Schroeder, didn't he end up on law,
Law and Order. Boy, this is one of those moments
where people are screaming at the computer right now. So
I genuinely don't think it was long and Order, but
it was something like that. I know what you're talking about.
All right, let's take a break and we'll figure out.
You can be Ricky Schroeder and I'll be Zach right
ready to one. Okay, all right, So where we left
(30:42):
off was that they're not sure why it happens between
three and four. They think it has something to do
with what they call a snag in this transition. It's
pretty SCIENTI yeah, it's a snag, so yeah, pretty much
did I again? They think it has to do with
your central nervous system still growing. But I mean, that's
(31:07):
weird because it only happens in some kids, and like
that exploding head syndrome, it happens in just the same way.
So there's there's something amiss here. It can't it's not
just like a normal aspect of childhood, you know. So
that would mean that there's a snag in the development
of central nervous system that it was was could happen
(31:32):
in a certain way a certain prescribed way. Yeah, I
see what you're saying. Um, not at least one person does.
It does run in the family, um, seemingly or oftentimes. Um.
Stress and anxiety can be a big trigger sleep apnea, Uh,
sleep deprivation if you have migraines, UM, thyroid hormones being
(31:55):
produced too much, too much booze, a lot of booze. Uh.
Maybe if you're sleeping out at summer camp or somewhere
else you've never been. Yeah. Apparently they have linked stressed
to it. Like I guess some parents have noticed that
the kid has a particularly stressful day, they may be
predisposed of having a night tare boys stress on kids?
(32:17):
That's just heartbreaking. Well, it's also been to basically all
forms of abuse. Yeah, it leads to a higher risk
of night terrors. And they have found that if you
a small percentage of kids who experienced night tabors, terrors
might go on to have psychosis later in life. I
saw that too, So I saw like that that was
(32:39):
widely reported. There was one study that found it, but
it was a decent studies six kids, and it found
that kids who have night terrors are eight times likely
or to experience psychosis later on in life, like you said, uh,
and they have found there it can develop along with anxiety,
bipolar disorder, and depression. In adults. It can be co
(33:00):
morbid with those correct. I hate that word, but it
gets it across, it does. It's just feel morbid, just sounds.
You know. They should have come up with a different word,
like hygienic. Co hygienic. That's the word you hate, right, yeah, morbid.
I don't know. It's one of those words that means
two completely different things. And why why do that just
(33:22):
have a different word. Well, let's come up with it
right now. I don't give me, give me some letters. No, okay,
I think that was a wise decision. Um. They used
to give you meds. Uh. Nowadays they don't do that
so much. So I saw that in this article, but
(33:44):
I also saw elsewhere that they're like, nope, med's best
thing to do. If your kid has horrible nights, give
them valium, like basically benzo diazepines, which are things like valium.
I think some antidepressants are benzo as a peans, but
something that will just knock you out and you're not
gonna have a night there, or any kind of interrupted sleep.
(34:07):
Apparently if it's bad enough, they will prescribe those. I'm
sure it's not like their go to like here, let's
give your kids these chemicals pharmaceuticals. But I think it's
um it's still on the table. And I saw this
report in a number of different places that um, there's
a reported case of some kid who had forty episodes
(34:31):
of night terrors in a single night. Wow, yeah, you
would give that kid valium? Holy cow? Yeah yeah, because
think about it, like, even if the kids not remembering
what's going on, that's still having like the fight or
flight effect forty times in a single night on its
little central nervous or central nervous system. It's not good.
(34:53):
So you'd be way better off just giving the kid valum.
Then one thing that um they found is that a
lot of times if you have two pepe that can
bring on a night terror if your bladder is really full.
Uh So what they do in that case is they
recommend you, um, wake your kid up a couple hours
into sleep and go, um take uh take the little
(35:15):
boy or girl to the bathroom, put them back to sleep.
And the thing that I saw about that, though, I'm
sure that that has something to do with it. But
I also think that they are inadvertently following what's called
scheduled awakening, which is the the go to treatment for
night tares. Yeah, I mean it's exactly what it sounds like,
which is you try and I mean I guess you
(35:38):
have to time it out pretty well. Yeah, but there
apparently are very predictable. Like if your kid suffers from
night tears on a regular basis, they're gonna have them
at about the same time every night. So you just
wake your kid up like ten minutes before then you
like five seconds before that. You wait, um, you you
wake him up just ten fifteen minutes something like that
before they normally have a night tare. Um, give them
(36:00):
some water something like, tuck them in a little bit.
But you roused them enough that you are preventing them
from going into such deep sleep that they'll have a
night tare. So they kind of dipped down towards sleep, um,
but or towards that super deep sleep, but never so
much that they experience a night tare. But they're still
getting good sleep, better sleep because they're they're um not
(36:25):
experiencing the fight or flighters. Because I was wondering about
that about disrupting the sleep pattern. But if yeah, that
sounds like it's a win win. Yeah, allegedly they're they're
still getting great sleep. Um. And I do want to
mention too with the bladder problem. I've said this before
in the show and it is my duty as always
to say it again. It was a late bed wetter.
And I always like to say this on the show
(36:46):
because kids out there that listen to this, if you're
late bed wetter, don't don't be ashamed. Nothing to be
ashamed about. It happens. It's hereditary. I went to bed
till I was wellve ish and no, it was about twelve,
and um, it was you know, a lot of anxiety
(37:08):
for a little chucky spending that out and stuff. So
if you're if you're listening out there and you're a
late bedwetter, just hang in there. It'll stop. And um,
hopefully you have parents that are understanding and friends parents
that are understanding. That's a big one. That's nice. Chuck. Yeah,
I'm not embarrassed anymore. I don't think you should be.
I'll pee in front of anybody. Yeah, go to sleep
(37:30):
right now and I'll do it. Uh. And then you
you know, we're talking about this. Um. Scheduled awakenings are devices,
and I found one on a popular online retailer for
a hundred and twenty nine bucks. And what it is.
It's just a little thing that well I wasn't gonna
say the name, but sure it's probably Luly. Yeah, you're right,
(37:55):
uh it. Um, it's a It vibrates the mattress at
intervals to wake your kid up gently. Yeah. Well, supposedly
it also learns when your kid has so you program
in when your kid normally has a night tare through
an app, I believe, and then it starts to pay
attention and learn when your kid actually has them. And
(38:16):
then yeah, it vibrates and and it does the same
thing as a schedule of awakening device, so you don't
have to be bothered, just let the robot take care
of your kids. I looked at the reviews though, and um,
it got um eighty one percent either four or five
star ratings, which means, you know, when it was it
was something like this, that means it worked for them.
(38:37):
How many ratings I don't remember, I mean several hundred,
I think, uh, and then eleven percent at um one star,
and again that just means it didn't work for them.
Like when you read it, people like it's absolute garbage.
It didn't work for some people are like I would
have given it five but I thought the packaging it
came in was dumb looking. Some people do that, man,
(39:00):
because people the worst. So whether or not you're using
a device or you're doing a scheduled awakening like Flatliners,
it's all about the timing. I got a time it
just right right or else pointing no return two movie references.
They're remaking Flatliners, by the way, of course, with a
(39:21):
new generation starring Juneo. Oh really yeah, who else? I
can't remember. Keep for Southerland just signed on. But you know,
one of those deals where they bring him back is
probably the old The old weirdo sits under the desk,
that's my guess. Uh. And I wanted to talk to
about something I didn't know existed. Um sheets that keep
(39:43):
you cool at night. Apparently sometimes they think it can
be triggered by overheating. And people have found success with
these wonder sheets that I didn't know existed. So I
looked them up. Their sheets that keep you cooler. It's
like a sheet that's a giant fan well, it's two
to three degrees cooler to the touch. Nice wicks moisture
(40:04):
away like our favorite nunties. Um prevents absorption of heat
from lights of your bed sits in the sun all day,
and sleep during the day. I guess. Uh, you're a
little kid on the lead shift and three times more airflow.
So we have to get some of those. Give it
a shot. Nice. One of the other things I saw
(40:26):
that they think might trigger it is restless legs syndrome. Yeah,
supposedly there's a link with those two. The Jimmy legs
that'll keep you up. So there's a story. Should we
talk about this guy in Phoenix? I feel like we
talked about him in the sleep walking episode. Yeah, we
talked about people killing and sleepwalking episode. Like he's not
(40:49):
the only one. Noah, I know, let's talk about him again.
Scott the ladder for later. I'll bet we said the
same thing in the Sleepwalking Scott. His nickname is save
it Scott, save it for later. No, I mean sorry,
I shouldn't be joking. He's in prison. Yes he Uh,
(41:11):
this was he Um. He stabbed his wife forty four
times and then held her head underwater in a pool.
Swimming pool. So what happened is this guy got up
in the middle of the night, went out to fix
his swimming pool, um with a hunting knife as a screwdriver.
(41:33):
His wife wakes him up. And that's why we said
not to wake someone up, because if someone's gonna get
violent during a sleep terror, it's because you were trying
to wake them up. And apparently you're supposed to just
gently guide them back to bed. Yeah, she did not.
She apparently startled him. Uh. He stabbed her uh forty
four times and then tried to drown her. And his
(41:54):
neighbor saw this called the cops, and that was his
defense that it was a sleep terror, which you know
can occur with sleepwalking. Um. And it didn't work. The defense. Um.
Basically the prosecution said their marriage isn't some rosy thing
like he said, Um, they're Mormon and she was trying
to kind of leave the church behind a little bit,
(42:16):
and he was upset about that. He wanted to have kids,
more kids and she didn't. Uh. Defense said all that
stuff was true, but not really that big of a deal,
Like it didn't lead him to snap and kill his wife. Um.
But that was his defense and it didn't work. He's
now in prison for life with no parole. Man. Can
(42:36):
you imagine though, if he really was just totally sleepwalking
having a night tare sad for everyone, Yeah, especially her.
I saw a BuzzFeed article actually called can You Die
from a Nightmare? And it was about this. Um, this
artist named Tobias Long hung himself in New York and
(42:56):
it's strongly suspected by people who know him that he
did it in the midst of a night terror himself. Yes,
he hunged himself. So you, um, you'll see during research
for sleep terror and night terror that it's harmless. In
any website where that's salt that saying this will have
an asterisk or will say but you can actually die
(43:18):
from it. People have fallen out of windows, people have
hurt other family members because, um, you can't have injurious
episodes is what they're called of night terrors, because you're
sitting there flailing, You're like trying to fight something off. Um,
You're you're again moving around because remember this comes during
stage three and four of deep sleep, where your brains
(43:40):
off but your motor function can still work, so you
can get up and walk around and feel fear and
be fighting stuff off. Um, but you're you're you're not
having a nightmare. You're having a night tear. So you
can harm yourself and others, so it isn't just a
totally harmless thing, which is usually what they say. Yeah,
by the way, we're gonna get email else because you
said hung innut hanged there. Thanks for that, all right?
(44:05):
What's going on in the brain though, specifically, like they
don't know what causes it, but they know what's lighting up,
then it all kind of makes sense. Well, it's like
I was saying, like the when you're in stage three
or four, your executive function is off, but you can
still experience emotions like fear and panic and you can
still move around, but you're not you're have you have
(44:26):
delta brainways, so you're not thinking, you're not dreaming, you're
just your body is just doing something really bizarre that
it's not normally supposed to do. Yeah, so that's what
a night terror is. What what what's going on basically
is you can commit acts of violence because that's switched on,
but you don't have that an inhibition switched on, that
(44:46):
switched off. So what they found is what is happening
during a night gare. Is it's it resembles exactly or mirrors?
Is it mirrors or is that opposite? Mirror would be opposite.
It resembles what happens when someone is violent when they're awake.
All right, no inhibition going on? Executive functioning, ah off off. Yeah,
(45:13):
it's a really weird, dangerous thing. Luckily it's mostly just
in kids, but apparently in adults that can be really
bad because you know, adults can be muscular, they know
they're way around a knife. They can be little kid
it's just like you just hold them in place by
putting pressure on their forehead. Their little kids that are
(45:33):
more muscular than me. Remember when I used to lifeguard,
I'd see like it's like a little twelve year old boy.
I'm like, that kid is naturally cut, like more than
more than I would ever hope to be. Hate those kids. Uh. Lastly,
there is an indie go go for an augmented reality
app called night Terrors that sounds pretty awesome and um
(45:56):
it's an app on your phone and it takes over
the flashlight on your phone, so you turn out all
the lights in your house and you walk through looking
at your house. The camera on your phone. That's how
you're looking at your house and it's lit by the
flashlight and everything, and all of a sudden, like a
monster will pop up, like out from around the hall,
(46:17):
your hall. It's just a really neat concept and apparently
they're executing it very well. What What is the whole
point though? To scare the Jesus side of yourself. It's
a horror game app but it's not really a game.
It's as you walk around your house and it scares
you to death. It's like Pokemon Go, but for creeps,
although Pokemon does for creeps too. There you go. I
(46:41):
didn't even know that was until yesterday. It's pretty new.
It's not that shameful. Given another weekend, it would have
been shameful. That's it, Huh. I got nothing else. Well,
if you want to know more about night terrors, you
can type those words in the search part how stuff
works dot com, so it's like search parts. Time for
listener mail. Uh, this is about Gettysburg address. Hey guys,
(47:07):
thanks for the show. Uh. Not only do you all
address cool and interesting topics in a meaningful way, the
dynamic between the two of y'all adds a layer of
enjoyment that can't be can't be duplicated. Thank you, perfect
mix of seriousness and humor. Perfect. This guy's right up
our alley. Uh why I'm writing those I listen to? However, No, no, no,
(47:31):
this is good. I listened to the podcast on the
Gettysburg address, and you mentioned all students across the country
pointlessly memorize this and other speeches, never really get what
it's even about. I can tell you I was one
of those memorized passages. Memorizing passages never ever helps anyone learn.
In high school, we not only had to memorize Gettysburg
Address Gettysburg, but Mark Anthony speech, which is what I
(47:53):
had to do, uh mcbet tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow soliloquy.
And in the month of April every year we had
to memorize a poem of our choice of at least
ten lines for National Poetry Month. They did it all
the time. And you know how many of those things
I remember now? Zero? Do you know how much I
can tell you about the passages and their meaning? Nothing.
(48:14):
I couldn't even tell you what poems I decided to memorize,
although I think one year I chose an e. Commings
poem because it was technically ten lines but maybe a
total of fifteen words. Yeah, Matt, he's doing it right. Uh.
I like comming, so good choice. So I'm with you
all on how pointless this all is. Keep up the
great work. You have a fan for life, and that
(48:35):
is Matt from Richmond, Virginia. Matt Anderson. Thanks a lot, Matt,
much appreciative. We appreciate the support. You know what I
remember from that age or like ad jingles like I
feel like chicken tent Knight, Like Chicken tent Night. Yeah,
chicken tent Knight, and you don't remember schooling, but you
(48:55):
remember where's the beef? Yeah? And chicken tonight was good?
And I think I remember that it was just a
jar of sauce. Oh, but it's like a whole gimmick
around it just chicken, and you can have chicken tonight.
So in other words, cooking meal entirely made of other
sauce and pour this stuff on your family will finally
(49:16):
love you. And they also had one called beef Tonight
pork tonight. I don't think they did. I'm sure those
were playing, but they never did it. They're like, we
just can't get the sauce right, Who's ever created a
good sauce for pork or beef? Uh? If you want
to get in touch with me or Chuck, you can
(49:36):
tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You
can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you
Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff
Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always
joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands
(49:56):
of other topics. Does it how stuff Works dot com,
m
This episode of Stuff You Should Know is sponsored by Squarespace.
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website apart. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House
Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
(00:27):
I'm Josh Clark, and there's childs to be Chuck Bryant,
and there's Yep, there's Jerry. Uh. This is Stuff you
Should Know the podcast. Uh, we are in our deep
freeze chamber. Yeah, it's a little cold in here. It's
freezing and I'm never freezing. No, I don't know what's
going on. Yeah, Like I just video producer Casey just
(00:50):
pushed a big rack of frozen beef carcasses by So
I think they're moonlighting, you know, is a is a
beef carcass freezer the butcher. When I said I don't
know it's going on, I meant literally, I'm confused from
hypothermia setting in facting my brain. You're just generally confused
(01:10):
about everything. Yeah, well, it's it's cold, cold as age,
cold as heck. Chuck, Yes, have you my friend ever
had what's commonly referred to as a night terror. Um,
are you referring to a sleep terror or pavoor nocturnus
(01:31):
or axis one colon three oh seven point four six,
or uh possession by a demon? No? I don't think so.
I haven't either. I would probably remember, I would think
as a child having these, although not necessarily unless your
mom or dad said, hey, there's something really wrong with
(01:52):
your kid, well, it would have been a thing. In
other words, right, yeah, because yeah, that's a good point.
It's gonna say thank goodness that we didn't have that,
but really thank goodness for our family, because when you
have a night teror sleep tear, you typically aren't capable
of forming any kind of memory of the event, certainly
of anything that's driving you crazy with fear. Yeah, you
(02:14):
wake up, you're surrounded by your entire family who's like
sweating bullets with looks of terror on their faces, shaking,
and you're like, what's what's going on? Yeah? Where the pancakes?
I was gonna say twinkies? But yeah, did you eat
twinkies for breakfast as a child? Well? No, I kind
of more imagine this happening at like two in the morning.
Got you. You know, nobody wants to cook being grabbed
(02:35):
twinkie pretty easy, I bet what would be good since
I recently invented the recy cat, all right, and people
actually ate them. Um, take a twinkie, get a pan
hot oh yeah, spray it with some or even better,
get some get a stick of butter and run it
over the pan, and then get one of those bacon
(02:57):
grill presses and then small two twinkies down. I don't
know if you should do that last part and griddle
them up nice and crispy. Okay, wow, yeah, maybe you
should do whether they're really golden brown and not just
fake golden brown. Man, that'd be good. You know. I
quit ultra processed foods, but I might try that. Actually, yeah,
(03:19):
I mean I'm joking. Of course I would never do that.
I had a twinkie and I think I ate one
for that episode. But I don't think I've had too
many sense then either. But that sounds good. Well, you
just said a crisp, buttery twinkie, and it does sound
kind of good. That's what stinks about having extra pounds,
as people probably say, yeah, chuck to seat twinkies all day. Well,
(03:42):
they call you twinkie behind your back. I don't fried
chicken all day, that's my problem. Oh yeah, yeah, fried
chicken will do it. But it can really be worth
it depending on the fried chicken to be raised in
the South. Where's the best place around here? Well, some
of the grocery stores around here have great fried chicken
in their deli. Really, yeah, that's my like, I don't
(04:02):
go to like fast food fried chicken. Oh yeah, no,
I'm I'm not surprised about that, but I figured you'd
say something like Mary Max or something like that. Occasionally
at a at a nice restaurant that has, you know,
over priced fried chicken, I'll try it. Mary Max is
good pretty much across the board with everything. Yeah, it's
ever had their um mint julip. No, it is so tasty, huge,
(04:27):
that is it. Yes, it's just great. Well that's because
they have to satisfy the aging alcoholics that go there
for lunch drinks. Mary max Tea Room is in Atlanta,
by the way. Oh yeah, everybody knows. It's a classic
old school Southern restaurant. But but you know, it's a
team room, so it's supposed to be a little nicer.
It's not like a meat and three right exactly, but yeah, yeah,
(04:49):
and uh Mary Max is also very famous for Mary
Mack having suffered night terrors as child. Yeah. See, people
thought we were on a tangent. Nope, not true. No,
that was all all written out. So night terrors. I
have never had them that I know of. I did
recount my sleep walking, uh episode in our sleepwalking episode.
(05:12):
Well put and by the way, we did sleepwalking is
science phasing out sleep? October? Is sleep that important? September two, Robust,
thirteen minute episode Sleepwalking August? Is there a disease that
kills us by preventing sleep? October? And that's it? What
(05:33):
about lucid dreaming? Okay? Yeah, sure? And then but I
typed in sleep as the keyword, so it didn't come up.
I think there's a couple more even that a dreams
would have brought up a few more than you're right. Yeah.
So anyway, if people want to hear everything, we know,
sleep sweet, the sleep sweet, that's it. Um. But yeah,
(05:54):
we haven't done. Oh and then by this time we'll
have done. Uh. What was the one we just recorded
about sleep? Gettysburg address It was a paras omnia too.
Oh geez man, we just recorded. It hasn't even been
released at this moment. You know what I'm talking about,
all right? Yeah, but you put me on the spot,
so I can't think of anything. I can't either put
(06:15):
both of us. It'll be added to the sleep suite eventually.
And here's another contribution. So we're talking night tears. Like
you said, there's some other terms for it. Apparently, if
you're serious about researching night tears, you call him sleep tears.
Because this was pointed out by a couple of pedantic sites.
That can happen anytime you sleep, if you take a
nap during the day, you can suffer one of them.
(06:36):
So you really shouldn't call him night tears. Yeah, if
you're one of those six year olds that works the
late shift and he's sleep all day long, that is
severely pedantic. But that's I was being unfair because adults
can get them, although it's uh much more common in children.
Let's just say between four and twelve. The best number
(06:58):
we have is about six six. Um, there is one.
I don't even know about this one. One study said,
but I think we should just throw that out the door,
because nowhere else did I see that. Yeah, there's a, Oh, really,
you didn't see that one. No, No, I didn't. I
mostly saw about around somewhere around six percent of kids
(07:20):
from anywhere between two and a half to twelve years
of age UM typically will suffer night terrors. And there's
like you're going to find out that there very few
things that are known about night terrors sleep tears. UM,
there's like tantalizing clues here there, but no one's ever
sat down and really like connected the dots. There's nobody.
(07:43):
There is virtually no sleep terror researcher that I came across.
I came across a few academics talking about it, and
there've been like apparently a few studies or whatever, but
there doesn't seem to be anybody who's focused on night tares.
Which is really strange to me because if you do
kind of start doing research about night tears, you find
(08:04):
that there is a lot of anxiety among parents. For sure.
This would help a lot of people, a lot of
families who are disturbed by this. Well, I can't imagine
being a parent and having your kid like, I mean,
it's not a nightmare. We're going to make the distinction
over and over. It's it's different it happens in a
different time, which we'll get to during sleep, but it
(08:25):
is uh, it is terror, like hyperventilating and your heart
rate is increased, your your eyes might be opening. You're
still asleep. You talk about terrifying and your people will dilate.
That's the stuff of nightmares, Like you've got the fight
or flight response going on. That's while you're asleep and
can't have your eyes upen Could you imagine anything more creepy?
(08:49):
Oh no, that's that's very creepy. Well, that's that's part
of the problem. I think that's one of the things,
not just being woken up by your kid having a
night tearor um. The fact that they're moving around like
they're scared to death, but there's nothing and they're like
walking around. They're like pushing you out of the way.
They're they're they're interacting with the world as if they're
(09:11):
awake and scared out of their minds. But you can't
connect with them, you can't console them because they're asleep.
They're not actually interacting with you. They're not hearing your
reassurances because they're not awake right now. They're in another world,
the world of sleep. It's really bizarre. Are you sure
they can't hear? Yeah, you have to wake them up,
(09:33):
and you're not supposed to do that. Secondly, but they're
not there. They're they're they're physically and they're acting like
they're they're they're not there, so you're they're literally inconsolable
at that point while they're having a night tare So Yeah,
for a parent and this is your little two or
three year old kid suffering this, you can't do anything
about it. You just have to wait for it to
(09:54):
go away. And these things can last up to like
twenty minutes, and there's nothing you can do aside from
keeping them from harming themselves. Yeah. Plus that means you're
awake for twenty minutes when you you should be sleeping,
just pounding twinkies. Uh. Gender wise, boys and girls get
it about the same, so it's really no difference. And um,
(10:17):
it's not like menstruation as no gender specific specific as
far as I know, we haven't done an episode on
that specifically. Though. We did female puberty. That that's that's enough?
Is that all? Yeah? We did male puberty and female puberty.
No more. I shouldn't have even brought it up. Um,
(10:38):
so gender doesn't matter. And um, they typically tail off
after you're a little kid, but you can't get them
as adults. And they say, after sixty five years old,
you were almost certain to not have a sleep terror.
And I just assume it's because nothing scares you at
that point. You've seen it all teenagers. Yea, the you're
(11:00):
you're impending death in teenagers, um, which probably reminds you
of your impending death. Really the world changing and all that. Um, Yeah,
there's a clue right there. Over sixty five night terrors
are almost unheard of. Another little tranche of life where
they're very much unheard of his adolescence. So you might
(11:22):
have them, um, when you're prepubescent, and then they go
away during adolescence, then they might pick up again as
an adult. Um. You know what's going on there. It
seems to be as far as like the very few
people who are thinking about this stuff, there seems to
be some sort of agreement that it has to do
(11:42):
especially in children with the developing central nervous system. You
know what, that's a great place for us to take
a break, so I can go look up what central
nervous system means. All right, you said, central nervous system,
(12:22):
and um, you know what it means. I do. I
went and looked it up. This descending string of nerves
that goes down from your brain and hangs down over
your body. That's right, I think like a marry net. Yeah,
it is very much like that. Um. So wow, that
was a great analogy. Actually, he just blew my mind.
(12:45):
Thank you. So you just tease before we left about
having to do with the central nervous system. Um, apparently
our our CNS matures up until the age of about
do you know what CNS means? Central nervous is right? Um,
but I was kind of surprised at I was shocked
at that was that late. Apparently it's a fairly recent
(13:08):
finding relief among science that it used to be you
know eight, you know, end of puberty. Um, Nope. Supposedly
now they believe the CNS keeps going and developing until uh, well,
we should talk a little bit about sleep. I know
we covered this in that awesome thirteen minute episode How
(13:30):
Sleep Works. Yeah, just the stages of sleep. Yeah, it
seems like this was better explained than our entire thirteen
minute episode. Yeah, and that we talked about in the
Dreams Episode two, And we had a TV episode of
our Science Channel show called Night Terror. Yeah, poor Kent
clinking Beard slept, walked, you had sleep back me all
(13:51):
sorts of terrible stuff. That was a fun episode. That
was um and and there's even a continuity mistake in
that episode if you remember probably several um did you know?
Our first three episodes are up on YouTube in full.
I think somebody actually sat there with their phone and
recorded it on their computer and then posted it to YouTube.
(14:12):
Now is it the real first episode? Meaning the pilot
that was the eleventh episode was the one that they
aired first. It was actually episode two, but it was
called episode one, wasn't it? All I know is coffee? Coffee?
But that was the first one, wasn't it? That was
episode one? It wasn't episode two? Yeah, that was the pilot.
(14:33):
The pilot was episode eleven. Yeah, but that was totally
different format. No, the pilot remember it was broken up
between body dysmorphic disorder and zombies. Oh no, no, no, no,
that's the pilot now, that wasn't it was? That was
the That was what we shot as proof of concept
that they ended up airing as the pilot. They call
(14:54):
it pilos where but the pilot episode of the real
show when we actually we're in a different location was
was Coffee Bought? Which they aired I guess tenth coffee
about air first? No, it didn't really, Yeah, that was
the rub Man. It's like, why would you air the
pilot last? Well, we aired the pilot last twice because
(15:18):
they showed the proof of concept one at the end. Right, Yeah,
they hated the show so much they decided to air
one extra episode. Oh man, what a rabbit hole that
was so uh talk about it. Yeah, this this article
here says we spent about a third of our lives
(15:39):
in deep sleep. Well that's not true, just sleeping and um,
that's true. Well it depends on the person, of course. Sure, yeah,
I guess that's true. I equate that with this sitting
at red lights thing. I've always been suspicious of that, Like,
it depends on where you are, spend how much you drive? Yeah,
x number of days at a red light. Yeah, these
are broad uh percentages, I think. Yeah, Um, I have
(16:01):
a friend that is so like that. I think started
worrying about his death early on in life and trained
himself to get as little asleep as possible so he
could do more. Oh that's neat and dude, since I've
known him in the in his early twenties, has been
getting like five hours or less sleep at night and
(16:22):
it's good. He's good with that too. Um, he should
listen to that is Science Phasing out sleep episode because
it was remember a lot about pills that help you, um,
stay up for forty eight hours and then just sleep
for the normal like eight. He didn't eat pills, he
just trained himself high. Yeah that's pretty interesting. Um. All right,
(16:42):
so when we go to shweepy time. Uh, there's something
called a dinner scene ADNNI sign a chemical that starts
to build up in your body, your brain, your brain,
right yeah, yeah, Oh, it's a neurotransmitter and at the
very least as present in your brain. I don't know
if it's manufactured there. You know, a lot of your serotonine,
(17:04):
like a tremendous amount of your serotonin is actually producing
your gut. That that doesn't surprise me. It was surprising
to me the first time I heard it because you
think it's a brain. It's a new transmitter, so obviously
the brains can generate Nope, most of it's in your gut. No,
I mean, I guess it didn't surprise me, and that
I know that a lot of healthy gut um life
(17:24):
life like a healthy gut can affect way more parts
of your life there, just like digestion. Um. So anyway, um,
that builds up the adenna scene and then uh, serotonin,
like you mentioned that goes to the brain and says,
all right, let's shut it down for the night. Shut
it down, everybody. You don't have to go home, but
you can't stay here exactly. Then they play Rick Astley
(17:46):
on the loudspeaker. Oh, is that what they do to
get people out? Well, every bar has her own song. Okay,
is Rick Astley go to though? You think I could
see it? Yeah? I used to play at Mexicali Grill
in college. I would play when we had the the
Eek fraternity big groups on the deck late at night.
I would play Public Enemy really loud. Oh yeah, And
(18:07):
they didn't like it, I'm sure, and we loved it.
Drove him out and they went back to the fraternity
house and did whatever they do there. Watch Dr Quinn
medicine woman. Is that what they're doing there? Is a
great letterman top I used to have this book of
Letterman Top ten lists from the nineties. Probably a third
(18:31):
of the jokes that I've said on this show really
are like rooted in that book, and that was one
of them. It was like top ten signs You're in
a bad fraternity. It was like, every Saturday Night is
Dr Quinn Medicine Woman Night? Your your secret fraternity handshake
consists of quietly holding hands for long periods of time.
Zee mckagar's I think Dr Quinn Medicine Woman is probably
(18:54):
top five least cool shows of all time. You know, yeah,
murder she wrote this up there. Okay, fine, it's not cool.
I watched that show at least once a week. Still,
I love that show. Where do you find it on Netflix? Yah?
I think it's probably on Amazon Prime. Do you really
watch that? I really genuinely like in in a totally
(19:16):
non ironic way. Well, Angela Lansbury is pretty sexy. I
don't know about that, but it's just it's a cozy
little show, especially you know, she travels abroad and and
goes to Europe and in New York A lot those
episodes are like so so for me. The ones that
are set in Cabot Cove and there's like a storm
and a murderer Maine. I think. Um, so it's like
(19:40):
a quiet little town and you know, something happens and
it's just like a cozy show. You can't can't stand it.
And it's not like she doesn't like the show itself,
it's just like, um, Angela Lansbury is such like a
schoolmarm to her. She always feels like she's in trouble.
Now on the background, Yeah, that's funny. So she's not
(20:02):
a big murder she wrote fan Uh did she just
walk through when it's on and be like, stop telling
me what to do? Angela? No, I won't go to
my room. Um, all right, so where are we were
falling asleep because the because Murder she wrote on because
Murder she wrotes on. And then we enter stage one
of five four h five, well technically five yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah,
(20:30):
so there's four stages and then a fifth an encore.
Yeah I guess yeah, it doesn't isn't considered a stage,
it's its own thing. Well. Stage one is when you're
you're sort of in that place where if things are
all good and you're not super anxious, don't have a
lot of anxiety. It's nice and quiet, it's dark. Um,
that means you're heading into sleep. If things are not great,
(20:54):
or you're anxious, or something's disturbing you, you could fall
back awake from stage one, that tenuous period. Stage one. Yeah,
that is stage one. If you have a book, you're
going to sleep in stage one. That's right. It was
exploding head syndrome. That was the one. So you go
on to stage two, start drifting off, and this is
(21:17):
apparently where you spend a lot of your sleep time,
although I don't know that this is necessarily true, but
your your brain waves start to take on a different form.
I think they go from alpha to maybe beta. Okay,
they're slowing down a little bit, you're calmed down, you're
not thinking quite as much. Um, your eye movement stops,
and you're just basically in that twilight period where you're
(21:42):
you're basically sleepy, but you could be awakened fairly easily
until you get the stage three. Yeah, that's when things
get real. That's when. Um. These there's something called delta waves,
and they were discovered by a guy named W. Gray
Walter the nineteen hundreds who was very gracious not to
insist that they're called alter waves. Totally would have He's like,
(22:02):
go with delta Uh. They operate between zero and four hurts,
and those delta waves are what makes they're They're responsible
for the restorative aspect of sleep, like when you wake
up and you feel great and refreshed, say thank you
delta waves. And um that doctor I guess he was
a doctor, doctor Walter Um. He was a student of Hanburger.
(22:29):
Hansburger mhm man. That's close. It's so so you shouldn't
name your kid Hansburger. Uh. Hansburger Uh invented the E
E G machine, and then Gray went on to make
that machine a little bit better. He improved upon it,
which is what allowed him to discover these knobs are ugly.
I'm gonna place him with orange. One looks old. So
(22:53):
that allowed him to discover the delta waves, which are great.
Those those are that's those are my favorite brainway. Yeah.
Even the name delta waves just sounds very soothing to me.
Del to right. So you're in did you say stage
four or three? That's things get cranking up in three
and by the time you're at four, it's all delta
(23:15):
waste and and like you said, that's where you get
that RESTful sleep because this is where tissue regeneration and
repair takes place. Your brain is shut down, like your
your executive function is turned off. You're not thinking, you're
not judging, you're not chewing over like all the stupid
things that you said wrong and how you could have
(23:35):
said them better that day, none of that's going on. Um,
you're just kind of out like a light. But your
motor strip is still conceivably active, it can be UM,
and your emotional centers are able to be activated as well.
For the most part, they're not. You're just out right right.
Then after stage four you totally shift gears and you
(24:00):
enter R E M sleep. So the first four stages
are non r E M sleep, and then you enter
R E M sleep rapid eye movement sleep, and it's
called that because your eyes just go nuts so all
over the place. The rest of your body is paralyzed,
and your brain turns back on and starts producing producing
the same brain waves alpha waves that you have when
you're awake. So you're thinking, you're dreaming, you're doing all
(24:21):
this stuff, but your body is paralyzed, right, and then
the whole thing starts over again. After about ninety minutes,
you go back into stage one sleep. Okay, yeah, and
whatever you do during R A M Sleep, don't go
back to Rockville. It's terrible. What's funny is I think
you make that joke every time we talk about the
(24:41):
stages of sleep. Well, I do, but it's a different
song every time. Okay, Yeah, it's just a bad r
M reference. You're right. I just feel like I have
to I'm with you, I'm with you someone. I wish
someone would send us a list of my dumb R
E M jokes from all of our very sleep people.
Don't waste your lives, yeah's yours? Go volunteer for a
charity instead. So um, the whole that whole cycle between
(25:05):
the four stages and R E M Sleep takes about
ninety minutes, and then through about the first half of
say you're say you're getting a good eight hours. First
four hours, those first four stages are going to take
up most of that ninety minutes to ten minutes, and
R E M is going to be less. And then
about halfway through your R E M is gonna start
getting longer and longer. In the cycle. Right, So the
(25:27):
second half of your sleep you're dreaming more. But again
it's the important point here is during stage three and four,
you're not dreaming. You're just out like a light. Yeah,
and I guess that what you just said before that
explains why I often feel like I, um remember my
dreams or dream heavier towards my waking hours. Yeah. Well. Plus, also,
(25:51):
if you are in R. A E. M sleep and
you awaken from it rather than awakening during one of
your other sleep cycles, you're going to remember your dream
because you're you're regaining consciousness, you're awakening. But again, your
brain has been on the whole time. You're just becoming
aware of what you were just thinking. So you're gonna
be able to form those memories when you're sleeping in
(26:13):
say stage three or four. Is we'll see you don't
form memories because your brain is not working like that. Yeah.
I probably asked you this in one of our dreamcasts.
But are you able to pick up a dream after
you've woken up and and it's something you want to
you know, resolve or keep doing? Not really, I've gotten
pretty good at that, have you. That's pretty neat? Yeah,
(26:33):
I don't it's not quite dream sailing like we talked about, um,
but I definitely like it happened this week. I was
having a dream that was great, and I woke up,
went and used the bathroom sitting down so I don't
wake up enough. And then I was like, all right,
and I just like think about nothing but that as
I go back to sleep. Okay, where was I? Yeah,
(26:53):
I got right back in it. That's awesome, man, that's
pretty neat. But I'm still not which is the one
where you control the dream? Is that dreaming? I wouldn't
say that. I'm that's where you're like, and now I'm
going to fly watch this and then you fly in
your dream. Can't do that, all right? So those are
the stages. Good extra info there by the way, I
didn't know that about the varying time cycle as you sleep.
(27:18):
I thought it was sort of all equal. I bring it,
you do bring it. Um. So what they do know
about night terrors or sleep terrors is between three and
four stages. Three and four is when this is happening. Yes,
in other words, it part of it has to do
with this transition that happens between the stages. They just
(27:42):
don't know exactly why. No, And it doesn't really make
sense because both stages three and four are considered deep sleep.
It's just deep sleep and super deep sleep. It's something
during that transition can cause night terrors. Yeah, and the nightmares.
I don't know if we fully said this. Nightmares occur
only during R E. M sleep, but uh, that's one
(28:04):
distinguishing factor from night terrors, and the fact that you
can you know, you can remember a nightmare. I can't
remember a night terror. Nope. You wake up and you
might still feel fearful for some reason, but you you
don't wake up and say, there was a beast in
my room trying to kill me. It's kind of like
how when you're watching Law and Order and you're like
(28:25):
super into it and like you just hate the murderer
in this episode, and then on comes like um, like
a Sharman ad and you're like this, why do I
feel so like mad? And then you realize, oh, it's
because I'm still keyed up from Law and Order. Same
thing with the night tear, Like you don't remember why
you're fearful, you just feel fearful. Still, it hasn't subsided.
(28:48):
I've never seen that show, but I was hanging in there.
You've never seen Law and Order? Huh, No, that is
not possible. I don't watch many major network TV shows.
Law and Order has been on for like twenty years,
and you've never seen a Law and Order. No, they're
missing out. I've never seen cs. I've never seen any
of those shows. That's fine, you're missing out a little bit.
(29:08):
With lawn Or, it's a really great procedural cop drama.
Now that's the one with Len that had Jerry or
back right, Lenny who? I love that guy. He's great,
But he's not the only one that's great. Like virtually
every single person who's been on this rotating cast has
done a great job. Didn't say by the Bell guy
get on there? Or was that another back? Yeah? Didn't he?
(29:31):
Eventually he was on one of those procedurals. He was
on a lawyer procedural with one of the guys from Clueless.
Really yeah, the skateboarder from Clueless. What? Yeah? They were
like goofy lawyers. Oh no, no, no, that's a different one.
I know you're talking about that. I don't. I don't
(29:51):
know if Zach was ever a cop. Oh no, I'm
thinking of Ricky Schroeder, didn't he end up on law,
Law and Order. Boy, this is one of those moments
where people are screaming at the computer right now. So
I genuinely don't think it was long and Order, but
it was something like that. I know what you're talking about.
All right, let's take a break and we'll figure out.
You can be Ricky Schroeder and I'll be Zach right
ready to one. Okay, all right, So where we left
(30:42):
off was that they're not sure why it happens between
three and four. They think it has something to do
with what they call a snag in this transition. It's
pretty SCIENTI yeah, it's a snag, so yeah, pretty much
did I again? They think it has to do with
your central nervous system still growing. But I mean, that's
(31:07):
weird because it only happens in some kids, and like
that exploding head syndrome, it happens in just the same way.
So there's there's something amiss here. It can't it's not
just like a normal aspect of childhood, you know. So
that would mean that there's a snag in the development
of central nervous system that it was was could happen
(31:32):
in a certain way a certain prescribed way. Yeah, I
see what you're saying. Um, not at least one person does.
It does run in the family, um, seemingly or oftentimes. Um.
Stress and anxiety can be a big trigger sleep apnea, Uh,
sleep deprivation if you have migraines, UM, thyroid hormones being
(31:55):
produced too much, too much booze, a lot of booze. Uh.
Maybe if you're sleeping out at summer camp or somewhere
else you've never been. Yeah. Apparently they have linked stressed
to it. Like I guess some parents have noticed that
the kid has a particularly stressful day, they may be
predisposed of having a night tare boys stress on kids?
(32:17):
That's just heartbreaking. Well, it's also been to basically all
forms of abuse. Yeah, it leads to a higher risk
of night terrors. And they have found that if you
a small percentage of kids who experienced night tabors, terrors
might go on to have psychosis later in life. I
saw that too, So I saw like that that was
(32:39):
widely reported. There was one study that found it, but
it was a decent studies six kids, and it found
that kids who have night terrors are eight times likely
or to experience psychosis later on in life, like you said, uh,
and they have found there it can develop along with anxiety,
bipolar disorder, and depression. In adults. It can be co
(33:00):
morbid with those correct. I hate that word, but it
gets it across, it does. It's just feel morbid, just sounds.
You know. They should have come up with a different word,
like hygienic. Co hygienic. That's the word you hate, right, yeah, morbid.
I don't know. It's one of those words that means
two completely different things. And why why do that just
(33:22):
have a different word. Well, let's come up with it
right now. I don't give me, give me some letters. No, okay,
I think that was a wise decision. Um. They used
to give you meds. Uh. Nowadays they don't do that
so much. So I saw that in this article, but
(33:44):
I also saw elsewhere that they're like, nope, med's best
thing to do. If your kid has horrible nights, give
them valium, like basically benzo diazepines, which are things like valium.
I think some antidepressants are benzo as a peans, but
something that will just knock you out and you're not
gonna have a night there, or any kind of interrupted sleep.
(34:07):
Apparently if it's bad enough, they will prescribe those. I'm
sure it's not like their go to like here, let's
give your kids these chemicals pharmaceuticals. But I think it's
um it's still on the table. And I saw this
report in a number of different places that um, there's
a reported case of some kid who had forty episodes
(34:31):
of night terrors in a single night. Wow, yeah, you
would give that kid valium? Holy cow? Yeah yeah, because
think about it, like, even if the kids not remembering
what's going on, that's still having like the fight or
flight effect forty times in a single night on its
little central nervous or central nervous system. It's not good.
(34:53):
So you'd be way better off just giving the kid valum.
Then one thing that um they found is that a
lot of times if you have two pepe that can
bring on a night terror if your bladder is really full.
Uh So what they do in that case is they
recommend you, um, wake your kid up a couple hours
into sleep and go, um take uh take the little
(35:15):
boy or girl to the bathroom, put them back to sleep.
And the thing that I saw about that, though, I'm
sure that that has something to do with it. But
I also think that they are inadvertently following what's called
scheduled awakening, which is the the go to treatment for
night tares. Yeah, I mean it's exactly what it sounds like,
which is you try and I mean I guess you
(35:38):
have to time it out pretty well. Yeah, but there
apparently are very predictable. Like if your kid suffers from
night tears on a regular basis, they're gonna have them
at about the same time every night. So you just
wake your kid up like ten minutes before then you
like five seconds before that. You wait, um, you you
wake him up just ten fifteen minutes something like that
before they normally have a night tare. Um, give them
(36:00):
some water something like, tuck them in a little bit.
But you roused them enough that you are preventing them
from going into such deep sleep that they'll have a
night tare. So they kind of dipped down towards sleep, um,
but or towards that super deep sleep, but never so
much that they experience a night tare. But they're still
getting good sleep, better sleep because they're they're um not
(36:25):
experiencing the fight or flighters. Because I was wondering about
that about disrupting the sleep pattern. But if yeah, that
sounds like it's a win win. Yeah, allegedly they're they're
still getting great sleep. Um. And I do want to
mention too with the bladder problem. I've said this before
in the show and it is my duty as always
to say it again. It was a late bed wetter.
And I always like to say this on the show
(36:46):
because kids out there that listen to this, if you're
late bed wetter, don't don't be ashamed. Nothing to be
ashamed about. It happens. It's hereditary. I went to bed
till I was wellve ish and no, it was about twelve,
and um, it was you know, a lot of anxiety
(37:08):
for a little chucky spending that out and stuff. So
if you're if you're listening out there and you're a
late bedwetter, just hang in there. It'll stop. And um,
hopefully you have parents that are understanding and friends parents
that are understanding. That's a big one. That's nice. Chuck. Yeah,
I'm not embarrassed anymore. I don't think you should be.
I'll pee in front of anybody. Yeah, go to sleep
(37:30):
right now and I'll do it. Uh. And then you
you know, we're talking about this. Um. Scheduled awakenings are devices,
and I found one on a popular online retailer for
a hundred and twenty nine bucks. And what it is.
It's just a little thing that well I wasn't gonna
say the name, but sure it's probably Luly. Yeah, you're right,
(37:55):
uh it. Um, it's a It vibrates the mattress at
intervals to wake your kid up gently. Yeah. Well, supposedly
it also learns when your kid has so you program
in when your kid normally has a night tare through
an app, I believe, and then it starts to pay
attention and learn when your kid actually has them. And
(38:16):
then yeah, it vibrates and and it does the same
thing as a schedule of awakening device, so you don't
have to be bothered, just let the robot take care
of your kids. I looked at the reviews though, and um,
it got um eighty one percent either four or five
star ratings, which means, you know, when it was it
was something like this, that means it worked for them.
(38:37):
How many ratings I don't remember, I mean several hundred,
I think, uh, and then eleven percent at um one star,
and again that just means it didn't work for them.
Like when you read it, people like it's absolute garbage.
It didn't work for some people are like I would
have given it five but I thought the packaging it
came in was dumb looking. Some people do that, man,
(39:00):
because people the worst. So whether or not you're using
a device or you're doing a scheduled awakening like Flatliners,
it's all about the timing. I got a time it
just right right or else pointing no return two movie references.
They're remaking Flatliners, by the way, of course, with a
(39:21):
new generation starring Juneo. Oh really yeah, who else? I
can't remember. Keep for Southerland just signed on. But you know,
one of those deals where they bring him back is
probably the old The old weirdo sits under the desk,
that's my guess. Uh. And I wanted to talk to
about something I didn't know existed. Um sheets that keep
(39:43):
you cool at night. Apparently sometimes they think it can
be triggered by overheating. And people have found success with
these wonder sheets that I didn't know existed. So I
looked them up. Their sheets that keep you cooler. It's
like a sheet that's a giant fan well, it's two
to three degrees cooler to the touch. Nice wicks moisture
(40:04):
away like our favorite nunties. Um prevents absorption of heat
from lights of your bed sits in the sun all day,
and sleep during the day. I guess. Uh, you're a
little kid on the lead shift and three times more airflow.
So we have to get some of those. Give it
a shot. Nice. One of the other things I saw
(40:26):
that they think might trigger it is restless legs syndrome. Yeah,
supposedly there's a link with those two. The Jimmy legs
that'll keep you up. So there's a story. Should we
talk about this guy in Phoenix? I feel like we
talked about him in the sleep walking episode. Yeah, we
talked about people killing and sleepwalking episode. Like he's not
(40:49):
the only one. Noah, I know, let's talk about him again.
Scott the ladder for later. I'll bet we said the
same thing in the Sleepwalking Scott. His nickname is save
it Scott, save it for later. No, I mean sorry,
I shouldn't be joking. He's in prison. Yes he Uh,
(41:11):
this was he Um. He stabbed his wife forty four
times and then held her head underwater in a pool.
Swimming pool. So what happened is this guy got up
in the middle of the night, went out to fix
his swimming pool, um with a hunting knife as a screwdriver.
(41:33):
His wife wakes him up. And that's why we said
not to wake someone up, because if someone's gonna get
violent during a sleep terror, it's because you were trying
to wake them up. And apparently you're supposed to just
gently guide them back to bed. Yeah, she did not.
She apparently startled him. Uh. He stabbed her uh forty
four times and then tried to drown her. And his
(41:54):
neighbor saw this called the cops, and that was his
defense that it was a sleep terror, which you know
can occur with sleepwalking. Um. And it didn't work. The defense. Um.
Basically the prosecution said their marriage isn't some rosy thing
like he said, Um, they're Mormon and she was trying
to kind of leave the church behind a little bit,
(42:16):
and he was upset about that. He wanted to have kids,
more kids and she didn't. Uh. Defense said all that
stuff was true, but not really that big of a deal,
Like it didn't lead him to snap and kill his wife. Um.
But that was his defense and it didn't work. He's
now in prison for life with no parole. Man. Can
(42:36):
you imagine though, if he really was just totally sleepwalking
having a night tare sad for everyone, Yeah, especially her.
I saw a BuzzFeed article actually called can You Die
from a Nightmare? And it was about this. Um, this
artist named Tobias Long hung himself in New York and
(42:56):
it's strongly suspected by people who know him that he
did it in the midst of a night terror himself. Yes,
he hunged himself. So you, um, you'll see during research
for sleep terror and night terror that it's harmless. In
any website where that's salt that saying this will have
an asterisk or will say but you can actually die
(43:18):
from it. People have fallen out of windows, people have
hurt other family members because, um, you can't have injurious
episodes is what they're called of night terrors, because you're
sitting there flailing, You're like trying to fight something off. Um,
You're you're again moving around because remember this comes during
stage three and four of deep sleep, where your brains
(43:40):
off but your motor function can still work, so you
can get up and walk around and feel fear and
be fighting stuff off. Um, but you're you're you're not
having a nightmare. You're having a night tear. So you
can harm yourself and others, so it isn't just a
totally harmless thing, which is usually what they say. Yeah,
by the way, we're gonna get email else because you
said hung innut hanged there. Thanks for that, all right?
(44:05):
What's going on in the brain though, specifically, like they
don't know what causes it, but they know what's lighting up,
then it all kind of makes sense. Well, it's like
I was saying, like the when you're in stage three
or four, your executive function is off, but you can
still experience emotions like fear and panic and you can
still move around, but you're not you're have you have
(44:26):
delta brainways, so you're not thinking, you're not dreaming, you're
just your body is just doing something really bizarre that
it's not normally supposed to do. Yeah, so that's what
a night terror is. What what what's going on basically
is you can commit acts of violence because that's switched on,
but you don't have that an inhibition switched on, that
(44:46):
switched off. So what they found is what is happening
during a night gare. Is it's it resembles exactly or mirrors?
Is it mirrors or is that opposite? Mirror would be opposite.
It resembles what happens when someone is violent when they're awake.
All right, no inhibition going on? Executive functioning, ah off off. Yeah,
(45:13):
it's a really weird, dangerous thing. Luckily it's mostly just
in kids, but apparently in adults that can be really
bad because you know, adults can be muscular, they know
they're way around a knife. They can be little kid
it's just like you just hold them in place by
putting pressure on their forehead. Their little kids that are
(45:33):
more muscular than me. Remember when I used to lifeguard,
I'd see like it's like a little twelve year old boy.
I'm like, that kid is naturally cut, like more than
more than I would ever hope to be. Hate those kids. Uh. Lastly,
there is an indie go go for an augmented reality
app called night Terrors that sounds pretty awesome and um
(45:56):
it's an app on your phone and it takes over
the flashlight on your phone, so you turn out all
the lights in your house and you walk through looking
at your house. The camera on your phone. That's how
you're looking at your house and it's lit by the
flashlight and everything, and all of a sudden, like a
monster will pop up, like out from around the hall,
(46:17):
your hall. It's just a really neat concept and apparently
they're executing it very well. What What is the whole
point though? To scare the Jesus side of yourself. It's
a horror game app but it's not really a game.
It's as you walk around your house and it scares
you to death. It's like Pokemon Go, but for creeps,
although Pokemon does for creeps too. There you go. I
(46:41):
didn't even know that was until yesterday. It's pretty new.
It's not that shameful. Given another weekend, it would have
been shameful. That's it, Huh. I got nothing else. Well,
if you want to know more about night terrors, you
can type those words in the search part how stuff
works dot com, so it's like search parts. Time for
listener mail. Uh, this is about Gettysburg address. Hey guys,
(47:07):
thanks for the show. Uh. Not only do you all
address cool and interesting topics in a meaningful way, the
dynamic between the two of y'all adds a layer of
enjoyment that can't be can't be duplicated. Thank you, perfect
mix of seriousness and humor. Perfect. This guy's right up
our alley. Uh why I'm writing those I listen to? However, No, no, no,
(47:31):
this is good. I listened to the podcast on the
Gettysburg address, and you mentioned all students across the country
pointlessly memorize this and other speeches, never really get what
it's even about. I can tell you I was one
of those memorized passages. Memorizing passages never ever helps anyone learn.
In high school, we not only had to memorize Gettysburg
Address Gettysburg, but Mark Anthony speech, which is what I
(47:53):
had to do, uh mcbet tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow soliloquy.
And in the month of April every year we had
to memorize a poem of our choice of at least
ten lines for National Poetry Month. They did it all
the time. And you know how many of those things
I remember now? Zero? Do you know how much I
can tell you about the passages and their meaning? Nothing.
(48:14):
I couldn't even tell you what poems I decided to memorize,
although I think one year I chose an e. Commings
poem because it was technically ten lines but maybe a
total of fifteen words. Yeah, Matt, he's doing it right. Uh.
I like comming, so good choice. So I'm with you
all on how pointless this all is. Keep up the
great work. You have a fan for life, and that
(48:35):
is Matt from Richmond, Virginia. Matt Anderson. Thanks a lot, Matt,
much appreciative. We appreciate the support. You know what I
remember from that age or like ad jingles like I
feel like chicken tent Knight, Like Chicken tent Night. Yeah,
chicken tent Knight, and you don't remember schooling, but you
(48:55):
remember where's the beef? Yeah? And chicken tonight was good?
And I think I remember that it was just a
jar of sauce. Oh, but it's like a whole gimmick
around it just chicken, and you can have chicken tonight.
So in other words, cooking meal entirely made of other
sauce and pour this stuff on your family will finally
(49:16):
love you. And they also had one called beef Tonight
pork tonight. I don't think they did. I'm sure those
were playing, but they never did it. They're like, we
just can't get the sauce right, Who's ever created a
good sauce for pork or beef? Uh? If you want
to get in touch with me or Chuck, you can
(49:36):
tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You
can join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you
Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff
Podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always
joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
Should Know dot com For more on this and thousands
(49:56):
of other topics. Does it how stuff Works dot com,
m
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