There may be times when you'd feel so tired and would suddenly jerk on your sleep. Or that time when you jerk while dreaming that you've fallen off a tall building. It sometimes leaves you grasping for air as your muscle would feel tensed.
As per The Cut this phenomenon is called hypnic jerk or sleep start which usually occurs when the brain would malfunction. Though not everybody encounters sleep start, it does however affect 70% of the population.
here are no further studies in regards to this matter, but it does not cause the body any harm. There no additional studies were made in explaining on how to avoid this from happening or what the major cause is. Dr Carl Bazil however has some insights in regards to hypnic jerk.
As per Elite Daily, the director of Columbia Sleep Disorders Center, Dr. Carl Bazil stated that "hypnic jerk" has something to do with the brain and the way it send sleep signals that would eventually confuse the body.
"One of the things that happens as you fall asleep is your muscles relax, but the awake part may still be stimulating enough that it will temporarily overreact and you get this jerk of muscle activity. "
He then added another example of muscle jerks; it's is when you would suddenly nod off in a bring scenario. He then explained that it is a possible evolutionary reflex, which is often correlated when you'd fall asleep sitting up. This may be harmless to humans; it can however be very lethal to primates.
"If you're in a position where your head starts to drop or your limbs start to drop, that may trigger this sort of response back into wakefulness," he says. "It would be kind of a normal process, but also, I guess, theoretically protective to keep people from falling asleep in the tree - or in the meeting, that might not be a good thing either."
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