Sleepwalking

Hello! I'm back again and today, I bring to you, another blog post which is about sleepwalking. Since my last post  was my introduction post, this is my first actual blog post about the subject of sleep. In this post, I will be including statistics about sleepwalking since some readers wanted me to include them.

Dude sleepwalking

The basic definition of sleepwalking would be the act of ''walking'' in your sleep. Meaning that you would get out of your bed and start to wander somewhere. When someone is sleepwalking, basically anything can happen. There have been cases where the sleepwalker has peed on something, to walking around a table and went back to their back right after, got up and started brushing their teeth, ended up hitting someone while in their sleep or maybe even killing someone. When I say anything, I mean ANYTHING. Seriously.


I will tell you, the readers, some of my own personal sleepwalking cases that I found to be very weird.

So, when I was younger, I don't really remember the year, but I was young. I liked to sleep on tables. You guys should try it sometimes. Same for sleeping on the floor. More comfortable than you think. Continuing on, the next day, my mom told me that around 10 pm, I got out of my bed, went downstairs, walked around a table in the middle of the room around six times and went back to my room. Weird.

Them brushing skills

When, I was younger, still don't remember the year, I had another case of sleepwalking. When I was younger I was one of those kids that went to bed at 8 pm and was still tired during school hours. Around an hour later after going to bed, I got up, went to the bathroom and started to brush my teeth while being asleep. Luckily I only started to brush my teeth and not start to pee. That time, I actually woke up by myself, well with the help of me choking on the toothpaste. My first thought after waking up was like, ''huh? What am I doing here?'' Then, I got out of the bathroom, checked the time and saw that it was around 9:30 pm. I was like, ''Oh no, I'm late for school again!''(I was late to school almost every day even though I live really close to the school.) Truth was that it was only around an hour after of when I went to sleep and still the same day.

Around last year, during the march break, my family and I went to Toronto for vacation. For the night, we stayed in a hotel. One night, we ended up going shopping until around 12 am and came home around 1 am. I had to obviously shower because I like to be clean and I sweat, a lot. After my shower I brushed my teeth because that is my daily routine. Since I don't go to the dentist, don't ask me why, I don't know the answer either I ended up going to bed around 2 am. Well, not really on a bed. Since there was not enough beds for everyone, I had to sleep on a sofa. When I woke up, I was on a bed and not on the sofa. It was weird because I haven't had a case of sleepwalking for awhile. So, I asked my mom and she said around 3 am she said that she would switch places with me so I could actually sleep on a bed. Apparently, I said yes and I got up, walked around the second bed, around my brother that was sleeping on the floor and got on the bed. It was really weird since it was the environment was new to me and I keep wondering how I managed to maneuver my way over to the bed, when it was the first night at the hotel. Weird.

This thing is evil

Normally, people would assume that the cause of sleepwalking would be from having nightmares. It could be the reason, but I personally haven't had a case of sleepwalking when I have nightmares that I know of. In fact, I did not have any nightmares on either of those nights, that I could remember. Of course, you would think, ''oh, you obviously a had a nightmare, but you forgot about it.'' Well, when I have a nightmare, I would normally wake up crying(yeah...) and usually my nightmares are about Tetris and blocks. I seriously don't know why I have nightmares on those. My point is, that on those three nights, before I went to bed, I was really tired and maybe I was sleeping in an uncomfortable position. Maybe my head was too high? I normally go to sleep on my right side, so maybe I slept on my left? Who knows? I know I don't. Hah.


According to Wikipedia(great source), they say that sleepwalking could be caused from being sleep deprived, having a fever or being extremely tired. Now that I think back, when I talked about the table story, I was indeed sick. Normally when someone is sick, they should have a fever and be tired, right!? Coincidence? I think not.

Also, sleepwalking could be caused from drinking alcohol before sleeping. Even if alcohol is a sedative, the sleep that the sleeper receives isn't ideal for sleeping. The alcohol would end up increasing the number of times that the sleeper would wake up during the night instead of allowing them to sleep peacefully. If you think about it, people that pass out while drinking normally wake up and end up falling asleep right after. If you have watched a show or movie that took place somewhere in a bar sometime in the story, most of the time there would be someone sleeping on the counter with their drink and would sometimes wake up randomly.

I love me some SpongeBob SquarePants gifs

According to my sources, it is said that the occurrence of sleep walking is decreased when the sleepwalker gets older and that children are normally the ones to sleep walk. Meaning that the older one would get, you would be less likely to end up walking in your sleep and scaring others. But remember, less likely doesn't mean that you will stop having episodes of sleepwalking.  Your eyes are open, it is creepy.

If you can see, not one thing has been mentioned about sleepwalking being caused by having nightmares. Dreaming is basically having thoughts about past events or something that we've seen before. Like I said, I used to sleep on tables, I brush my teeth everyday, and I would normally sleep on a bed instead of a sofa. All these three are ''past'' events but also things that can happen to me in the present and even the future. What I'm saying is that I never had a nightmare while sleepwalking. However, there have been cases that people had a nightmare while they were sleeping and tragic things happened.

This is a story about a man named Brian Thomas who admitted to killing his wife while sleepwalking because he had a nightmare of fighting an intruder.
Brian Thomas, age 59 and his wife Christine, age 57 were on a holiday in West Wales when he attacked his wife in the middle of the night. They were both asleep in their van when they were in a car park but were disturbed by young boys. So, they decided to go back home. While sleeping, he had a nightmare about the young boys breaking into their van. The next morning, Mr. Thomas woke up beside his wife's body and dialed 999. He told the emergency operator that he thinks that he killed his wife thinking that it was an intruder that he was fighting back. However, the breaking in of the young boys was all a dream and what he had done was reality. Mr. Thomas admits that he caused the death of his wife, but he isn't guilty to murder or manslaughter since he had suffered from sleeping disorders for 50 years.

Sad

I never finished reading the rest of the story because it requires me to sign up for an account for Times of London and I don't want to sign up since it gives me spam mail. After reading this story, I felt sad for Brian Thomas. They've been married for 40 years and they went on a holiday for their anniversary, to find out he next morning, he killed his own wife. I can't even comprehend how he can live with the fact that his wife died by his OWN hands and that he had no control over it. Honestly, I find Brian Thomas to be a good man, despite killing his wife. Well, he had no control over it soooo... Even though he killed his wife, he instantly called the emergency number and admitted that he was guilty. Many people would end up trying to run away and hide the evidence. You can tell that he really loved his wife, that she meant the world to him because he didn't even care what would happen to him if he called the police and the future that could've awaited him. He shouldn't feel guilty because there was nothing that could've been done. Sad story indeed.

I forgot to mention something else. If you wake up a sleepwalker, they won't die from the shock. They might become disorientated and wonder why and how they're not in their bed. You don't really need to forcefully wake a sleepwalker unless you really need to. If they're only wandering, you can simply guide them over to their bed and lie them down. However, there are some people that get really violent while sleepwalking. So, watch out and stay safe!

Statistic

Thank you for reading this blog post and I hope you'll stay for the remaining posts and next time, it the subject will be about inception. So stay tuned if you want to hear my thoughts about the movie and about inception itself. Never watched it, so I hope it is good as many say it is.

Leonardo Dicaprio though

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepwalking
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/waking-a-sleepwalker-may-kill-them/
http://www.livescience.com/20367-sleepwalking-survey-americans.html
http://www.clublexus.com/forums/the-clubhouse/465129-sleepwalker-admits-killing-wife-while-fighting-intruders-in-nightmare.html
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/nov/20/brian-thomas-dream-strangler-tragedy

Class discussion
I can think?