Exploding Head Syndrome Isn’t What You Might Think
No, your head doesn’t blow up.
You’ve laid down after a long day. As you finally start to fall asleep, you hear a loud noise that startles you awake. What was that? You realize that nothing caused that noise. That noise came from you! The heck?
Exploding Head Syndrome is when you’re just falling asleep, a loud noise, sometimes accompanied by a white flash, will wake you up. Both of these things were created by you.
This hasn’t been studied very comprehensively so it isn’t well understood. We do know that it doesn’t really affect your sleep much. We also know that it can be brought on by being tired or stressed. It can happen multiple times in a night, or it can happen every day, every other day before a long dry spell occurs.
It’s quite common to be frightened when being woken up this way. There are also some people who can become very aroused instead. Another aspect I forgot to mention is that this can be accompanied by small twitches, otherwise known as Myoclonic jerks.
This is apparently most common in people in their 50’s but it’s been seen in all age ranges from children to 80+ year olds. Luckily, this isn’t a dangerous condition. Part of the treatment process is education and many people actually have less of them when they find…
